I am a firm believer that action films require a male lead in order to be effective in the action market. Nearly every one of these films is about revenge, taking on a spirit of vengeance, or taking on the role of justice. But the strange part of this is that both vengeance and justice are feminine deities in mythology, and at multiple levels. The male action hero is less about taking revenge or enacting justice and is more about understanding their role in taking revenge, which can result in not wanting revenge at all or realizing there is something more grand to the journey they enter. This is why mystery and whodunit stories appeal to women, because women enjoy aspects of revenge and justice, while being less interested in the more masculine aspects like enlightenment and the hero’s journey.
That statement alone is enough to set any wokescold’s blood a’boiling, because it’s a factual statement.
None of this means it’s impossible to make an action movie with a female lead, it just means it will be built differently with themes exclusive to the female role. I’ve talked about the movie Furie here and there when talking about female roles in stories because it’s a clear example of how to do it right when the female role is meant to be a tiger mother archetype. The story is simple: a mother has her child kidnapped by bad guys and she goes out to retrieve her child and save her from the dangerous world they live in. This kind of story is very primitive, with how it’s no different than if a tigress lost her cub and had to find it in the wilderness. The tiger mother finds her strength by being more feminine, closer to mother earth, and using her nurturing spirit to stay dedicated to her main goal: protect her cub.
Not only protect, but also allow her cub to flourish in the world by making sure her child studies hard, gets a good job, and gives the air of “not being good enough” because that is what the world tells us every day. We will never please the world and feel comfortable at any moment for any reason unless we willingly let our guard down, and that’s when the snake devours the cub. The tiger mother views the world as harsh, unforgiving, and a constant threat of corruption that will swallow their child whole. They are not paranoid, they are realistic. They are not carefree, they are careful. This mentality causes them to become very authoritarian, and so the tiger mother might as well be called the empress, because they are to be the empress of both their world and the world of their child’s.
A fury is one of the Furies from Greek mythology, who are the 3 goddesses of vengeance. Nemesis came before them as a goddess of revenge, but it is more like Nemesis handles anger between gods and the furies cast curses upon humans. In the movie Furie, there is a detective who is after the same villain, with the villain being this drug lady(as in female version of drug lord) and she is the dark sorceress of the streets. The Drug Lady represents the terrible chaotic side of the earth mother, with her minions being these evil demons who kill and rape anything in their path. The entire story of Furie was a mythological tale presented in modern day Vietnam in one of the most beautiful depictions of such a tale I’ve seen in a while.
This is not meant to be a hero’s journey other than the journey of the detective, who gains a gift from the tiger mother in the form of protection while he also saves her in the end, meaning there is a supportive synergy going on in their relationship. The authoritarian femme fatale assisting the masculine authority is a story about control between both family and society. An action movie like this is why I love action films when they have effort put into them, because there is deep subject matter being played out through simple interactions between individuals and between that we get epic fight scenes.
Let me tell you: these fight scenes are awesome.
It’s not just about a woman beating up a bunch of dudes. It’s about how she struggles to get through each fight but will still carry on because that’s what a mother does for her child. It’s no different than when a noir hero fights his way through hordes of goons in order to enact his revenge. All of these little fights represent thoughts in our head like “give up” and “go back”, which are meant to detract us from our main goal. Get hit too much or get surrounded and we are forced to play defense or hide behind something, which is no different than being like a turtle hiding in their shell. The turtle, the hermit, only works in isolation and it’s meant to be the moment of introspect.
All of that is a way of saying that the action hero should only play defense to plan a better attack, because the world around them will not give up on the onslaught. These are the moments in an action movie where someone is healing or planning a new attack, with the occasional doubt hitting them near the end. The movie Furie has these moments, specifically for the tiger mother to heal and make a plan to get her daughter back, which enhances the movie’s credibility. We need these high and low points of an action movie for rest, progression of story, getting to know the characters more, and also we don’t expect a budget to be constant expensive action all the time.
If anything, the furie in this movie is a representation of Alecto, goddess of unceasing anger, due to her dedication that goes beyond the death of those who wrong her. In the mythology, the furies are three sisters who live in the underworld, specifically Erebus(meaning darkness), which is why it’s appropriate to have this movie mostly at night and involve the criminal underworld. Whenever an action movie involves the criminal underworld as a setting, they are mirroring the underworld of mythology in a form of katabasis, a journey into the underworld. Think of something like Orpheus or Dante or Jesus making a trip into the underworld in order to achieve a goal. The underworld in this case is always related to something like a wilderness or a hedonistic primitive state of mind that’s full of everything unlawful because the primitive state is before society and order is established.
The male enters the underworld to become enlightened and the female lives there because it’s their domain.
Rape, murder, theft, drug use, kidnapping, everything that we are able to do as humans but only do once our shadow has taken over. The shadow, the darkness within us, is what is so present in the underworld that the entire world is enveloped in darkness, under this shadow. When taken symbolically, this movie works beautifully and it makes sense to have the evil villain kidnap the child of our tiger mother heroine and also try to harvest her organs. This villain, named Thanh Soi, appears to be something like a big bad wolf who goes around and devours children. Being a female antagonist, she represents the ruthless underworld and chaos that causes the world to be so treacherous and causes the tiger mother to be so dedicated.
I have nothing but praise for this first movie because it sticks so close to mythology and fits itself into an alchemical form of storytelling. It’s no surprise this movie was nominated for awards and it probably would have won a lot of them if people respected the beautiful choreography and neon noir aesthetics. I would even go far enough to say that it’s one of my favorite action movies of the decade, if not in the top 10 of all time. It provides a female action heroine in a way that works because she is entirely feminine in her approach to everything, down to her not really having a hero’s journey because that’s reserved for the male assistant she has, who is in the form of a detective.
Sadly, thanks to the colors pink and purple always being present in these neon noir movies, we have encountered a massive issue in how these kinds of movies will be made in the future.
For a quick reminder, noir is the film genre where a cynical hero enters an existentialist journey that changes them for the worst because they were touched by the darkest elements of the world. In noir, the femme fatale always aids in bringing this male hero to his downfall, because the femme fatale is a representation of Lilith and this existential crisis our hero enters represents the fallen state of Adam. These stories are aided by German expressionism and poetic realism, to both ground and extend the story into an almost surreal world that we can relate to. The inner mind of the hero gets reflected out onto the world to cause this expressionism, which allows aspects like elongated shadows and warped environments to symbolically fit into the story and make it look fascinating.
Neo-noir is a postmodernist form of this genre that takes some of the aspects of noir and tries to experiment with more current trends, keeping some of the aesthetics and aspects that resulted from decades of pulp stories being told and merged together in what I would like to call “mental slop” that is created in media by merging elements together after years of experimentation and deconstruction. No longer does it have to do with a cynical hero or an existential crisis, because now the barriers of the genre are removed and people simply recognize it as noir for some vague aspects that might relate to noir, such as dealing with a criminal underworld or the snappy way hardboiled dialogue would be written.
A good way to put it is that neo-noir holds noir “themes” and “sensibilities”.
This is further continued into neon noir, which is not a fully established genre quite yet, but is noticed recently with the increased popularity of retrowave and cyberpunk. The neon lights of the 80s are brought into this neo-noir story to create a contrast between two colors, similar to how noir was filmed in black and white. This is an aesthetic choice and is usually in the form of contrasting purple against a blue because these are complimentary colors. Lights are very present in this new genre, but the light is less of a source of clarity and more like a new form of obscurity. The expressionism in these movies are used for mood enhancing, due to the tranquility of blue and the excitement of red.
All of this is important to note because postmodernists will take everything that works about these factors and then try to avoid anything that makes sense about it. They go by whatever they feel and hope their experimentation doesn’t blow up in their face. Sometimes it works, like in the case of the movie Drive, and other times it doesn’t like in the sequel to Furie called Furies.
Everything was set up for this sequel. There was no way for it to be worse. It had more money, it had Hollywood investing in it, and the concept of the tiger mother can be used as much as any typical action hero setup could be used. Just have a villain who runs a crime syndicate, have a person who was wronged by this crime lord, they seek out revenge, and it ends with the villain being defeated.
Simple, right?
Well… this movie didn’t do that. I mean, it did, but it didn’t in the way that works. There’s a villain, a male drug lord who runs a casino and kidnaps women to sell their bodies for sex. There is a person who is wronged, who is a woman that lost her husband and child at the hands of this drug lord. This woman is seeking revenge and she defeats the villain at the end.
But she’s not the protagonist. She’s not even A protagonist. In fact, they made her the actual villain of the story. The villain… kills the villain. They probably thought they were doing a “Darth Vader killing off the Emperor” kind of thing, but they weren’t.
We are told in the beginning that this woman is to be like a mentor, the fairy godmother who protects our protagonist and guides her through this treacherous world. She’s meant to be a sort of adopted tiger mother, the way lesbians do it, and instead turns into the wicked stepmother by the end. But it seems I’m getting ahead of myself, so I’ll explain this story in a more coherent manner.
This sequel is a prequel. It happens before the first movie. We are introduced to a character named Bi(pronounced like BEE) who claims in a monologue that she was “destined for darkness”. Hey, makes sense. The Furies were born from Nyx in one of the mythologies, so being born from night to be destined for darkness is a sort of match made in heaven for this kind of character.
She becomes a homeless wreck after a drunk man tries to rape her and killed her mother. She killed him and is forever reminded of that moment every time she gets blood on her hands(a running theme we will see later). This is where a lady named Jacqueline finds her and brings her under her wing, hiding her with two other girls. Symbolically, we can determine these three girls are meant to be the furies: Alecto (“Unceasing in Anger”), Tisiphone (“Avenger of Murder”), and Megaera (“Jealous”).
Already, this entire thing fell apart and deviated from the mythology.
I say this because the other two girls are nothing like the furies of mythology and I can only assume Bi is meant to be Tisiphone because her mother was murdered. But she already got her revenge, so there’s not much for her to do in that regard. The girl named Hong is meant to be a cute Harley Quinn style psycho and the girl Thanh Soi is meant to be a butch biker. The two girls want their own forms of revenge against the drug lord that runs the streets they live in, mostly because both used to be slave girls and want to free their fellow women who have been enslaved. Jacqueline convinced them that she wants to free the slave girls as well, and all of this training that she puts them through is for this mission, but there’s a catch.
Jacqueline kept her relationship with this drug lord secret, because she was working with him and ended up having her husband and child killed by this drug lord. For years, she planned out revenge and set up several spies within his ranks, including the boyfriend of Hong. All of this is revealed in the end, so we go through the whole movie believing they are out for vigilante justice against crimes, specifically against women, when it was all because a bitter mother was betrayed after trusting a man too much. Already, this sounds like a mess, and it is. This prequel makes such a simple story incredibly convoluted and tries to use twists as a plaster for weak narrative and symbol subversion. But there’s a reason for this.
The woman who acted as the main heroine in the first movie also plays the role of Jacqueline. These are two different women in the movie’s setting, being played by the same woman. On top of that, the first movie was directed by a man and now this prequel is written and directed by… this same actress in question, Veronica Ngo. That’s right, she decided to play the villain after she wrote the script and directed the entire thing.
It was designed for this woman to crank herself silly.
And boy does it show in the movie. Quite literally in every scene. I say this because the first movie held shots for a while and had the simple story unfold slowly, with long moments to settle down and let the beautiful environment sink in. In the prequel, we are supposed to enjoy flashing colors as every scene is cut and edited like a movie trailer. I’m not kidding when I say that.
Every. Single. Scene.
Even the scene where Bi is being raped by a drunkard is treated like a movie trailer, with the camera changing all over the place and music playing as she monologues about how everything sucks. This camera is a massive pain to sit through, because it’s either constantly moving, getting splashed with CGI blood, zooming over people’s shoulders, or switching between 5 different conversations before a single thought could be finalized. It does that thing where someone is talking in a different scene and then a few seconds later the camera goes to where the person is talking, as if the transition was meant to be meaningful, but it would be for any little thing.
This is the sign of someone trying to experiment with things but are completely incompetent in what they’re doing. It gets worse when we enter fight scenes that look like they were edited frame by frame to hide the fact that they didn’t know what they wanted the fights to look like. The only time a camera holds for longer than a second is when someone dies off screen or Bi starts to suffer from her PTSD. And boy does she suffer.
They have a moment where she kills a random goon, gets blood on her hands, and when they return to their hideout, she vomits in the sink. She gets flashbacks to her first assault and the day her mother dies, which results in her trying to fight Thanh when she tries to calm Bi down. They fight in the bathroom and one of them knocks a valve loose, which causes the shower to turn on and shower both of them as they try to grapple and fall to their knees. This moment is meant to be a loving embrace between sisters during a time of need and support, with Thanh being a protective sister who is dedicated in making sure the new sister is able to get through harsh mental anguish whenever she is triggered.
This, my friend, is the entire problem with this movie.
I understand it’s meant to be emotional and heartfelt. I don’t deny there is thought put behind a moment like this. The music swells, the colors are somber, the water slowly falls on them as if to say the water purifies their thoughts and cools their head. I get it. But what the hell does any of that have to do with being a fury?
This isn’t about taking vengeance, this all feminist woes being presented for the sake of representation. Hong later on has a birthday party and they all celebrate by singing 90s songs(because this movie is meant to take place in the 90s) and when Bi came into the picture they had a makeover montage. This is an action movie written like a teen romcom without the romance and nothing in it is meant to be comedic. There are light hearted moments, sure, but I would never call it a comedy except for this one moment where a drug addict begs for drugs and the drug lord throws it on the ground for him to snort it, and then the drug lord pisses all over him.
To me, that is funny, but it’s treated as a horrible moment to make us hate the villain who doesn’t even really do anything. One of the most disappointing moments is when the furies sneak into a bedroom with him by disguising themselves as club whores and they have the perfect moment to kill him. Bi messes up by being too obvious with her stab attack and he runs away with a slight wound. This is where we have a fight that is meant to be a key moment: a hallway decorated with silhouettes of dancing women as the place fills up with black suited goons.
This moment is meant to show how brave and powerful the girls are, and all it does is accidentally present a massive stereotype where women can't get the job done and they are granted luxuries by having beautiful bodies while wearing a lot of makeup. When I saw this, I figured at least the action scenes will make up for the lack of theme, and… boy was I wrong.
These action scenes, as I said before, are a mess. Everything is a close up so we can’t see what’s going on and every attack is a wide swing that gets blocked by an arm that comes up 5 seconds too early. There is this back and forth that happens with each fight that makes it look functional and the music keeps it pumping, but it always looks like the fight coordinador told them to do everything wrong as a joke and the director was none the wiser. There are even moments where they use the wrong sound effect, like when someone gets punched and it does the stabbing sound effect.
Sure these are tiny technical things, but it gets worse when I am forced to mention the infamous bike scene.
So, Hong dies at the hands of this guy called Son, who is meant to be the dragon below the drug lord. Her boyfriend sees it, with her boyfriend acting as a spy who has infiltrated the drug lord’s ranks, so he’s standing there shocked and everyone ignores him. The remaining two sisters decided to run away on a bike and ensue in a chase sequence that is some of the worst CGI fighting I’ve seen in a while. There was no reason for any of this, they just put it in because the director thought it would look cool. I have no idea what it is with women and motorcycle chases, but there’s something where a woman on a motorcycle is seen as a “sexy” thing, specifically for women.
Not sexy to be sexual, but it’s something that women find aesthetically pleasing, and I can only imagine that it has something to do with the feeling of a bike vibrating between their legs. It also has to do with the idea of danger, because it’s easier to fall off a motorcycle than it is to fall out of a car with the doors closed. That, and I think it’s a fantasy for women to actually ride them without crashing. It’s the director’s way of saying “See! Women can ride motorcycles too!”, as if refraining from instantly crashing is an achievement.
But considering these are women and they are Asian, the fact they are not crashing instantly is a miracle.
What makes it funny is that in order to say “women can ride motorcycles too”, they put these women on a motorcycle and then transition it into a CGI race through the city with the motorcycle sitting in place in front of a greenscreen. We can easily tell this is happening because the wheels aren’t moving and there is the world’s fakest looking background flying by with whacky angles and movements being made with the camera. Bad guys fly into the screen from behind like TIE fighters in the old Star Wars movies, clearly breaking through the scenery, and I could not stop laughing at how terrible it all looked. And they somehow managed to make it worse by having a moment where one of the girls gets knocked off the bike and the other keeps riding to go up a ramp and onto a roof, only to get knocked off the bike herself and the bike flies off the roof and explodes in a corner.
I think I forgot to mention this but EVERYTHING EXPLODES in this movie. It’s as if the direct thought “hey, this part doesn’t have much substance to it, let’s fill it up with explosions.” There’s even a part earlier where they light a building on fire because it was a place where girls were being held captive. They throw lighters in random areas that have lamp oil or alcohol conveniently placed for them and random areas of the building start blowing up. What are you guys lacing in your cocaine over there, nitroglycerin?
Finally, we come back to the ending, the part of the story that ruined it for the movie. Bi and Thanh go to the drug lord’s hideout, they seek revenge for their lost sister, and meanwhile we have Hong’s boyfriend kill Son because… he was her boyfriend and had sex with her. Way to go movie, that sure shows what men care for. We only fight for those we bang and the sex was really that important for him. Forget meaningful things like a firmly built relationship or a child being made between a man and a woman, those aren’t important to a man. It’s all about the dedication someone has to a girl who sold her body for money.
But you know what? His motives and story aren’t important because we don’t even really see him. In fact, they bring in several characters that we’ve never seen before and act as if we’re supposed to know them. This is when they enter the drug lord’s underground casino, with the casino representing a massive gamble that this entire mission has been taking. However, the concept of gambling doesn’t mean much since the story repeatedly hits us with talk about fate, which is meant to relate to the sisters of fate in Greek mythology. I thought we were going to get some kind of motif going on every time they mentioned fate, but they just said “this is our fate” and that was it.
So they enter the casino and start shooting up the place. I don’t know what guns they are using, but they have enough ammo in their magazines to practically be infinite. There’s even an editing flub where they were supposed to show one of the girls reload, but they just show her pulling the slide back to load a bullet in the chamber, as if that’s enough. At least this part of the movie tries to implement gun-fu, but the way they do it is surreal because it’s entirely for show and there’s nothing practical in any of their attacks. They come with limited ammo and see themselves outnumbered, but they end up shooting people in the hands and feet while fighting as a way to ease off some attacks, to then shoot the enemy in the head.
Fast forward a bit and we have one of the stupidest twists enacted on screen. Jacqueline came with the girls to finish this once and for all, and while fighting she is seen getting stabbed in the back by a henchman. The drug lord watches it happen on a CCTV and celebrates. This looks like a perfect time for Bi to get her revenge on the main villain. But no, that would be the smart thing to do.
Instead, they have Bi and Thanh held at gunpoint in a room after a surprisingly difficult fight against a crackhead armed with a syringe who walked up to them like a zombie, and no I am not making that up. It sounds stupid, because it is, but they put that into the movie because someone decided it would be a good time to include something zombie related in a movie that has nothing to do with zombies. So, they’re held at gunpoint and then Jacqueline barges in and shoots the drug lord’s limbs to make sure he suffers. The boyfriend of Hong also comes in and is like “yeah, let’s get our revenge on this sick bastard”.
Then Jacqueline shoots the boyfriend of Hong. Everyone in the room is like “what the hell is going on?!” and Jacqueline kills off the drug lord and goes “Ok, now Thanh has to kill Bi” and both of them are just as confused as the audience. Even if Jacqueline was this new villain who becomes the new drug lord, it’s not like either of the girls would join her if she continued the sex trade. So, Thanh does the expected and tries to shoot Jacqueline instead, but was too slow and gets shot herself. The final fight is between Jacqueline and Bi, with Bi shooting Jacqueline several times.
But this is the part that made me really pissed: they fire the same gun over 30 times without reloading and then the second the gun is trained on Bi’s head… it’s empty.
The only way for this to be more convenient for Bi is if a bird flew in and airdropped a white turd into the eye of Jacqueline and had it explode for good measure. But because that didn’t happen, we have Bi tired as all hell and she collapses in a room full of dead bodies. Police come in and find her alive, arrest her, and then imprison her for 15 years. The big twist of this, the reason this is a prequel is revealed in this single moment where we see her leave her jail cell.
Who was Bi this whole time?
She was the villain of the first movie: Thanh Soi.
Apparently, the name is meant to be something like “she-wolf” and she took the name in honor of her dedicated sister in battle, Thanh Soi. This means that this entire time, the one we’re to be rooting for ends up being this horrible monster from the first movie that was kidnapping children and harvesting their organs. All because she… didn’t like to get blood on her hands.
If you think that none of this makes sense: welcome to the club.
The first movie was brilliant and coherent all the way down to a mythological level. It hit us deep in our unconscious and is something to be remembered years after watching it for how heartfelt each scene was made. It even brought some sympathy to some of the villains with how one of them was spared by the tiger mother because the guy’s own mother was present. It followed a theme of motherhood, while the second movie tried to follow a theme of sisterhood.
Where motherhood was filled with morals and justice, the sisterhood was filled with contradictions and partying.
I do not believe this was done out of a lack of budget or a rushed job. This was the result of how wokeness infiltrates even some of the least western influenced countries to create senseless garbage that nobody likes. We are not only to sympathize with one villain, but we are told that we have to sympathize with two, while the male villains are completely reprehensible. This movie was designed with woke Charlie’s Angels in mind and it shows with how they took three women to fight for a mentor and the only male on the team is treated like a bag of meat. What makes it more hilarious for me is that I’m constantly told by the woke that it’s bad to give women tragic backstories for why they become villains and there’s no excuse for having rape as part of this tragic backstory.
This is the feminism that is designed to trigger western feminists while hoping that Hollywood accepts it as “feminist enough”. This movie was not designed with men in mind, because female action movies are always plagued with over edited fight scenes, girl power moments, and romcom montages. I wish I was kidding, but I have yet to see a female focused action movie that refrained from doing these pointless representation calls, because the goal is to represent in this way.
She Hulk, Charlie's Angels, feminist Ghost Busters, Men in Black International, Atomic Blonde, Captain Marvel, Gunpowder Milkshake, Lucy, Jupiter Ascending, Disney Star Wars, basically every Disney and Pixar movie now. All of these movies are designed specifically to say women can do stuff guys can and then fail to show them doing stuff guys can. Then they wonder why these movies flop and get memed into oblivion. The only people who care about seeing a woman beating up men are angry women, because that is a low resolution view of what the movie is even supposed to say. The only people begging to see that on screen are women who hate men enough to want to beat them up.
This is not a lot of people. This is surprisingly a small fraction of the population and this is who these movies are trying to appeal to. Everything else around this low resolution declaration is meant to be spectacle for the sake of spectacle.
Why did the motorcycle explode? Because explosions are cool.
Why did the girls light a building on fire? Because fire is cool and it leads to explosions.
Why are they shooting the limbs of people? Because shooting limbs is cool.
Why does the camera get covered in CGI blood every 5 seconds? Because blood splatters are cool.
I’m not going to sit here and say something like that lacks style. It has style and it is spectacular. But when placed in a movie with zero meaning and zero purpose, this baseless spectacle gets lost in a sea of nonsense and there’s nothing to hold onto other than the possible impressive choreography or the impressive practical effects. This movie had a little bit of something, but it could never hold a candle to the dedication and effort put into the first movie. I also want to mention the camera work because this is also tied into woke ideology.
Every time the plot is trying to be expressed or shown, the camera and scenes are given the smallest amount of lingering. For example, a turf war begins after they blow up the slave holding… place and it’s shown as a turf war in two events. A person gets shot and people start getting attacked by random. These events lasted for about 5 seconds each. We’re told that Bi is homeless and fighting the local gang by having her steal a wallet and then have someone shout “hey, this is our turf!” all in the span of 5 seconds. We go from the girls going through an outfit montage during a plan to the girls working at the club of the drug lord in about 5 seconds.
If you didn’t get it by now: everything in this movie goes by the 5 second rule, but only when it is about the plot.
Do you want to know what lasts longer than 5 seconds? Moments where the girls are talking about stuff they like and parts where they pose together to present girl power. So to the woke, it takes the tiniest amount of time to show how someone enters the worst stage of their life, but it takes minutes to let us know that these girls plan to stick together and fight side by side. Everything important is done with quick flashes and everything unimportant is lingered on. This is a tactic of the woke to bring the mundane into the essential.
The goal is to feature tiny bits of important things to let the viewer understand why they are in that position, and then hammer in the idea of wokeness that the director or writer wanted to virtue signal for. The woke do not dedicate their focus on the themes of the story that matter to the audience and instead force the viewer to put up with things the woke writer is focused on so that the propaganda is viewed in the first place. We are promised a story about a mother seeking revenge and instead we are treated with the rise of a villain who became that way because she was abused as a child.
Using the woke lens of intersectionality and critical feminist theory, we can determine that the themes of this movie dwindled into arbitrary concepts like PTSD and girls trying to stay friends till the end. All of these are the result of mental weakness and toxic behavior that is now being given an excuse because the context of why they do these toxic actions are presented, even if it’s for 5 seconds. Now a woman like Bi is able to be excused for harvesting the organs of children and even blame men because it all started when her mother was a prostitute and a random drunk guy raped her. This is the polar opposite from how a tiger mother acts, because we are not trying to give excuses for a dedicated mother doing what a dedicated mother does. The tiger mother is a big part of what causes us to survive and is something to strive for because that’s what allows us to reproduce.
Being raped and then suffering PTSD over it doesn’t.
Thanks to intersectionality, the woke demand to present vices as virtuous and weakness as strength because this is how they take the outliers and bring them to the center. This goes beyond postmodernist subjectivity. It becomes subjective advocacy to obfuscate reality itself and pretend it’s incoherent just because their own agenda is incoherent. This is why every time there is a rule, they will pretend there is an exception to it, just because they don’t understand what that rule is or it’s not detailed in a way that prevents horribly bad faith takes. Every established rule for writing established doesn’t have an exception, just an attempt to reject what’s actually effective. These rules were established because they work and because people respond to them positively.
The woke hate positive results because those are the results that signify the rules work.
I don’t mind a female lead in a movie. I also don’t mind when a female lead is in an action movie. I don’t even mind a sisterhood or girls having magic powers or anything like that. Those things make sense to me when they are done properly, which the movie Furie did when they had the tiger mother as the protagonist and a harvester of child organs as the antagonist. That makes 100% sense to me, both symbolically and entertainment wise.
What I don’t like is when wokeness barges into established IPs and tries to change everything to say absolutely nothing of value. I’ve noticed that these feminist and LGBT stories always try to deal with the same nonsense that is done in a sad attempt to connect with some sort of audience they have in mind. Sexual abuse, PTSD, feeling oppressed, mental disorders, spousal abuse, prostitution, sexual deviancy, leaving their family to be with a sexual partner, drug abuse, being found by a guardian lesbian to feel protected, entering a sisterhood or a group of fellow LGBT agents of destruction.
These types of stories don’t mean anything to normal people. We can see some of these things as a terrible thing to have happen and we can attach a negative symbol to these things, but there’s no way in hell a person who’s never experienced any of this feels represented. The representation of a minority, that just wants to claim oppression because of their own choices or because of something that rarely happens, is a losing game. Normal people will either hate it or not care. I have every reason to blame the director for these horrible decisions and I have every reason to claim her poor decisions are because she fell for woke nonsense as a woman.
But no matter what, I refuse to let such an issue deter me from liking the first movie, even though she’s the main actress. The people featured in a story mean nothing to the story outside of how well they can act the part and be the character. Now we even have to say that the actor must retain the source material and culturally make sense, all because the woke want to bring the outliers to the center and turn every Disney character black. Especially the red heads. I only covered the feminist aspect of wokeness here, so we can leave woke race swapping for another time.
Furie is an amazing movie that will be remembered positively for years to come.
Furies is woke trash that will only be remembered for how terrible it was.

I am a 43 year old UX designer with 8 years in the field. I have made decent money (but only the last few years.) Before that I was mired in student loan debt and earned miserably low wages all my life. I always wanted to be an artist and musician but have taken care of myself/lived alone and paid all of my own bills with no help all of my life. Consequently I have always been too exhausted from working to do much else.
I am wrapping up a contract and have some money saved and am considering taking a few months off to start an online store for stickers, coloring books, digital downloads, etsy type stuff, and illustrations and see where that takes me. I've also been taking guitar lessons. It's slow going. It's hard to keep up steam for any of it and find myself facing a real conundrum.
I could continue working in UX which pays well but I am totally burnt out on and sick of office politics and endless zoom meetings and corporate mandatory fun events/circle jerks and getting up too early and taking shit off an incompetent middle manager-OR pursue an interest i should have developed long ago if I wanted to be successful at it. I can draw and paint and make characters, etc but the trouble is I don't have a developed aesthetic or style that's recognizable. So that would take a while.
Has anyone else ever done something similar? How did you motivate yourself? It sounds so romantic on paper but when I stand there and face it I feel lost. Would love to hear experiences from other professionals who shifted gears or started their own biz

I am a 43 year old UX designer with 8 years in the field. I have made decent money (but only the last few years.) Before that I was mired in student loan debt and earned miserably low wages all my life. I honestly feel like I've wasted my life. I always wanted to be an artist and musician but have taken care of myself/lived alone and paid all of my own bills with no help all of my life. Consequently I have always been too exhausted from working to do much else.
I am wrapping up a contract and have some money saved and am considering taking a few months off to start an online store for stickers, coloring books, digital downloads, etsy type stuff, and illustrations and see where that takes me. I've also been taking guitar lessons. It's slow going. It's hard to keep up steam for any of it and find myself facing a real conundrum.
Should I continue working in UX which pays well but I am totally burnt out on and sick of office politics and endless zoom meetings and corporate mandatory fun events/circle jerks and getting up too early and taking shit off an incompetent middle manager-OR pursue an interest i should have developed long ago if I wanted to be successful at it. I can draw and paint and make characters, etc but the trouble is I don't have a developed aesthetic or style that's recognizable. It's hard giving myself the time, patience, and opportunity to do that when I feel like I should already be there, you know? It makes me sad and feels daunting to start over in that way. But I hate feeling trapped in the life I currently have. I feel dead inside.
I guess it takes faith which I feel short on lately. Faith that I could ever become successful and make as much money as I do with my day job.
Has anyone else ever done something similar? How did you motivate yourself? It sounds so romantic on paper but when I stand there and face it I feel lost. Would love to hear experiences from other professionals who shifted gears or started their own biz

This is my attempt at a master list. I've added letterboxd links for each film and a brief description for those looking something to watch. Let me know if anything should be added!

CW:

Brief discussion of violence, drugs, abuse, SA, sexual themes, and general disturbing content
if a film is on here it doesn't mean i necessarily recommend it, or like it, just that it fits within nicole's aesthetic.
Links and descriptions mostly taken from letterboxd

films that nicole has referenced

Welcome to the Dollhouse - An awkward young girl struggles to cope with neglectful parents and bullying at school. Odes to Dawn Weiner is named after the main character of this film
Freaks - A circus’ beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.
Natural Born Killers - A disturbed couple become serial killers together, and are romanticized by the press. Natural Born Losers is arguably named after this film. Also referenced in Blue Moon Motel
The Elephant Man - Based on the tragic life of Joseph Merrick, a man born with severe deformities who was put in a circus side show and abused through his life because of them. Cries of the Elephant Man's Bones was written about him.
Grey Gardens - The story of two eccentric elderly women living in an isolated long island estate. one of nicole's favorites
Badlands - Based on the Starkweather-Fugate case, a series of murders committed by Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate. Nebraska is based on this case.
Flowers in the Attic, 1879, 2014 - Destitute after their fathers death, the dollanganger children are hidden away in a room while their mother attempts to regain favor with their grandfather, who never approved of the marriage to begin with. Nicole's favorite book series. The name Dollanganger is pulled from the books, she has a tattoo of it, and Fleurs Captives was inspired by the story.
Pet Sematary 1989, 2019 - A family moves to a rural town wherein lies a burial ground that can bring the dead back to life- at a cost. Please Just Stay Dead was inspired by this story.
Guinea pig 2 : Flower of Flesh and Blood - **PARTICULAR CW ON THIS ONE,**it is extremely graphic goreA woman is kidnapped and mutilated for 40 minutes. Flowers of Flesh and Blood was named after this film.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye, 2000, 2021 - The story of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker Messner and her husband Jim Bakker. Tammy Faye is named after this film.
Hitmen for Hire - A school project by the shooters behind the Columbine massacre. Audio from this video is sampled in Rampage.
Only Angels Have Wings - At a remote South American trading port, the manager of an air-freight company is forced to risk his pilots' lives in order to win an important contract as a traveling American showgirl stops in town. Only Angels Have Wings was named after this film.
Dogtooth - A controlling father locks his three adult offspring in a state of perpetual childhood by keeping them prisoner within the sprawling family compound. The title of Dog Teeth may be a reference to this film.
Nightmare On Elm Street (series) - Films 2-5 and Freddy's Dead are some of nicoles favorites. The Greta Gibson Forever EP is named after a character in the 5th film.
Edward Scissorhands - A small suburban town receives a visit from a castaway unfinished science experiment named Edward. one of nicoles favorites
Let's All Go to the Lobby! - A commercial that played in the previews at movie theaters. Nicole covers it in the Greta Gibson Forever EP
Sunset Boulevard - A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity. Referenced in Blue Moon Motel. One of Nicole's favorites
True Romance - Clarence marries escort Alabama, steals cocaine from her pimp, and tries to sell it in Hollywood, while the owners of the coke try to reclaim it. Referenced in Blue Moon Motel and You're So Cool.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? - A former child star torments her paraplegic sister in their decaying Hollywood mansion. One of Nicole's favorites
The Shape Of Water - At a top secret research facility in the 1960s, a lonely janitor forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity. One of Nicole's favorites
Boy's Don't Cry - Biopic about the tragic life of Brandon Teena. One of Nicole's favorites.
Gummo - Solomon and Tummler are two teenagers killing time in Xenia, Ohio, a small town that has never recovered from the tornado that ravaged the community in the 1970s. Bunny Boy is named after this film. A Marvelous Persona also samples audio from this film.
IT, 1990, 2017 - A group of misfit kids fight a demonic clown who is terrorizing their town. 30 years later they must return to kill it once and for all. Beverly Marsh is based on one of the characters.

Films that fit nicole's aesthetic

The Virgin Suicides - A group of boys become obsessed with 5 mysterious sisters, sheltered by their strict parents.
The Crush - A teenage girl becomes obsessed with a naive writer- to disastrous consequences.
Wedding in White - A young girl becomes pregnant after an assault, and is horrified at her parents' response to it.
Picnic at Hanging Rock - A group of school girls go out for a picnic at a strange rock formation, where some girls wander off - and vanish.
Blue Velvet - The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of criminals who have kidnapped her child.
Thoroughbreds - Two upperclass girls rekindle an unlikely friendship and learn new things about eachother- and that a murder may solve both of their problems.
Slut - 16 year old Maddy leads a lonely life caring for her disabled grandmother in their rural home. Like everyone in the small town, she spends her free time in the local roller rink.
Palo Alto - Three intertwining stories about teenage boredom, lust, and self destruction.
The Quiet - After her fathers death, a deaf teenage girl moves in with her godfamily, where she learns her abrasive godsister may be harboring a dark secret.
Dolores Claiborne - A reporter returns to her hometown where her mother has been arrested for murder. While she tries to uncover the truth, she uncovers dark memories of her childhood that she might wish had remained lost.
Angela - A disturbed young girl who has delusions of Lucifer and Mother Mary performs many rituals and misadventures in an attempt to heal her mother's mental illness.
What's Eating Gilbert Grape - A young man in a small Midwestern town struggles to bear the responsibility of his dysfunctional family while attempting to pursue his own happiness.
Alice, Sweet Alice - In 1961, a divorced Catholic couple's life is turned upside-down when one of their two adolescent daughters is suspected of her younger sister's brutal murder during her First Holy Communion and a series of subsequent stabbings.
I Believe In Unicorns - Follows the lyrical journey of an imaginative teenage girl who runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter, but not even unicorns can save her now
Lilya 4-ever - Sixteen-year-old Lilja and her only friend, the young boy Volodja, live in Russia, fantasizing about a better life. One day, Lilja falls in love with Andrej, who is going to Sweden, and invites Lilja to come along and start a new life.
We Need To Talk About Kevin - After her son Kevin commits a horrific act, troubled mother Eva reflects on her complicated relationship with her disturbed son as he grew from a toddler into a teenager.
Elephant - Several ordinary high school students go through their daily routine as two others prepare for something more malevolent. The film chronicles the events surrounding a school shooting.

Timestamp: https://imgur.com/a/y9lRHdu
I'm the original and only owner of all of these knives, which have been carried and lightly used (but not abused) by me. All have been sharpened by me with either a TSProf Kadet (TRM Atom and Bugout) that I since sold or a Work Sharp Precision Adjust Elite (Shaman and Demko AD20.5). The Atom and Bugout have more refined edges, as I worked through a whole progression of Venev Orion stones. The Shaman and AD20.5 are a bit 'cruder', but still sharp. All the knives for sale include their original boxes.
TRM Atom - 20CV blade / OEM "Gray Ghost" contoured 3D Tek-Wood scales
Photos: https://imgur.com/a/fqLRdse
This is probably the toughest of these four knives to part with. I've had this Atom for some time now and have switched out scales more than a few times. It turned out that the Gray Ghost contoured 3D Tek-Wood scales were the perfect ones for me, with a little kick of laminated color on sides and cut-out, to boot. Nothing much to say about the Atom that hasn't already been said, so I guess I won't.....**asking $210*\*
Demko AD20.5 - 3V blade / smooth Ti scales
Photos: https://imgur.com/a/WrnNlTL
Insanely great action on this one, and of course, lockup is rock solid. As I mentioned earlier, my use of the Work Sharp Precision Adjust Elite sharpener didn't exactly produce an aesthetic marvel on the edge, but it is sharp.**asking $240*\*
Benchmade Bugout (535-3) - S90V blade / Flytanium "Europa" blue-green Crossfade Ti scales
Photos: https://imgur.com/a/UFzBPZk
The aftermarket Flytanium "Europa" Crossfade scales bring the Bugout to a new level, and actually the original Benchmade carbon fiber scales were really good! (Please note that I sold the OEM carbon fiber scales separately).**asking $300*\*
Spyderco Shaman - CTS-204P blade / Flytanium carbon fiber scales
Photos: https://imgur.com/a/sVwYlRb
Another great knife improved by some excellent aftermarket scales. In this case, though, I do have the original forest green G10 scales, which will be included with sale. Also, a note on the blade finish/edge here.....this was the first knife I sharpened on the Work Sharp Precision and the 200 rough grit hadn't quite 'worn in' yet, so there's a few small scratches near the edge bevel, including my mostly successful attempt to create a small sharpening choil.**asking $250*\*
Asking prices are PayPal G&S, with shipping by USPS Priority Mail from St Louis. I'll gladly do discounts for bundling two or more knives.
What else? Oh yeah....since this painful reduction of my already relatively small folding knife collection is all about funding an upcoming hiking trip to Glacier National Park,** I'm not looking for trades.*\*
Thanks for checking this out.

Had a busy weekend. It was great, amazing, fabulous; but also rough emotionally. Bittersweet if you will.
u/OkayFlan - [x4] Thank you for the inspirational p/c, the St. Patrick's day p/c, the thank you p/c, and the "perfect" p/c! I always look forward to getting your cards!
u/melhen16 - Thank you for the St. Paddy's Day p/c. I love the cut on the card and frogs have a special place in my heart because of my grandmother. <3
u/littlemermaidxx - Thank you for the giraffe p/c. I hope you were able to defend your food from your hyper kitty!
u/caknuck - Thank you for the letter p/c. I'm sorry your daughter is under the weather. I'm sending positive energy her way and healing vibes.
u/MaeveTheBrave - Thank you for the Bewick's Wren p/c. That's a great way to get your practice in. I have been drawing a little bit lately, but not that much.
u/thunderlightboomzap - Thank you for the beautiful spacy card and stickers! Girls are hard to talk to. That's a fact! ^_^ Also you're wax seal is so amazing! I have a coffee cup that has bees on it and it says "Bee Positive" and it's kinda been a thing for me because I used to post edited pictures of it with positive things.
u/Jdoodle7 - Thank you for the Elephant Card. Be on the lookout for a return letter. ^_^
u/mypetitmal - Thank you for the Flo-Jo p/c. I'm glad your cats bring you joy. I Love both dogs and cats - really animals in general. :D
u/yetanotherblankface - Thank you for the "Adventures of Andre And Wally B" Post card. I love bees! <3 (Reason is above)
u/mcdeekey - Thank you for the "Melody Gardot" p/c. I'm doing okay - Weather is sunny for most of the week and warming up (yuck!). We have severe storms expected on Friday so that'll be fun. Apparently the storms this year are more likely to produce tornadoes according to some weather chasers I follow.
u/catnatomy - You Found the card! The Art is fantastic. I Love it so much! <3
u/queenofthescreen - Thank you for the congratulations p/c! I actually knew the fact about cat pee. I love all the stamps!
u/stephkempf - Thank you for the Congrats Card! I'm happy I've spread kindness around the world. ^_^
u/cloudycat4 - Thank you for the lovely bird p/c. I love the designing you did on it and the sticker!
u/libertyprogrammer - Thank you for the Congrats Card! I'm not sure if it's coincidence or if somehow you knew I loved sunflowers - But I do and this card and stationary is amazing. I need it so badly!!! (If you remember where you got it, I'd love to know.)
u/DianaPenPal - Thank you for the Congrats Card! I absolutely love the poem!! And your signature is so beautiful!
u/TinertZab - Thank you for the "Wiechmann - Bildkarten" p/c! It's beautiful. Yes, Spring is officially here >.< I totally get stressing out about getting gifts, but I love being able to cuddle without sweating to death. LOL
u/mumbagoespainting - Thank you so much for the thank you card, It's some of my favorite colors and definitely my aesthetic. <3 I'm glad to have made you smile!

Hi! Recently I've found a lian li o11 dupe within my budget and I've recently been wondering how I could decorate it. I'm not a huge gamer and neither is my processor intended for heavy gaming (5600g), however I want to decorate it so it's aesthetically pleasing to look at. Feel free to send in pictures of your builds or cool mods (like stickers) to look at!

I've been wanting a new cane for a while; currently rocking a fairly simple one from Fashionable Canes (not the one in my pic, that's my backup folding cane).
Really wanting something more visually interesting, but all the really fun looking canes are pretty expensive, or sus on safe usability.
Also: Derby-style handle is my jam.
Biggest thing is I'd like something cheap, which means I'm probably going to need to DIY the aesthetics a bit. In that case I'd just get a good solid cane and go from there. Maybe plaster it with stickers or something for a punk aesthetic :P

Hey, I am currently in the process of planning what PC parts I can choose for tasks related to Machine and Deep Learning.I do not care about the aesthetic looks of my machine but purely about performance. No RGB, no colourful stickers, JUST PURE PERFORMANCE.Looking for general-purpose ML/DL tasks. Also, hardware that can support Tensorflow. Would like your thoughts on the motherboard, specifically if I wanted to make sure it's compatible with future versions of CPUs and a recommendation for a better CPU cooler around the price range?
Currently, the following are the parts that I've scouted out for my PC:CPU: Ryzen 7 7600xMotherboard: MSI Mag B650 (with wifi and Bluetooth)RAM: 4x8 GB DDR5 (~5000 Mhz anything in this neighbourhood works)Power Supply: EVGA Supernova 850 GT - 850W (modular)GPU: RTX 3060CPU cooler: Deepcool AK400SSD: Samsung 970 EVo 1TBHDD: Will probably get cheap drives.
I'm wondering if there are any improvements that can be made to this build, either to increase performance or to save money without sacrificing too much performance. I'm open to switching out any of the parts if there are better options available.
Feel free to write down what you think of this setup in the comments and maybe rate it!
Thanks in advance for your help!

3187 words
A god's secret name holds the key to their deepest powers, and speaking it to their face transfers that power to the speaker. Isis once tricked Ra into revealing his secret name, giving her his powers and making her the most powerful goddess in the land. This precedent still stands for all time, as the power of the gods lies not only in their secret names, but also in the courage of those who claim it, even if they are otherwise a fool.
-RV. Chronicler of the Kenoma.
Once upon a time, as I crouched down to clean the kitten litter boxes in Madam Zoe's cluttered garage, I heard a loud buzzing noise coming from my smartphone. I paused and checked the screen, confused since I had music playing that should have overridden all notifications. An emergency broadcast was flashing across it. On the screen, I saw Ra, the Sun God. His shimmering golden fur glowed as he stood on a space chariot with billowing golden sails trailing out behind it like the sun itself. Alongside him were Set, the God of Violence in the form of an indigo lion, and Bastet, a pink Abyssinian Cat Goddess of Protection. The three of them were locked in fierce combat with a monstrous storm of green neon space dragons that swarmed around the solar chariot. Behind them, some impossibly large monster's wings blocked out all other light beyond the solar chariot.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was like some wacky TV show, but the graphics were so realistic that I couldn't help but be mesmerized. After a few moments, I shrugged it off and went back to cleaning the litter boxes. After all, the posters on the walls read "the Golden Rule of Goodness is this: save all cats and kittens!" And for me, that meant keeping their litter boxes clean and tidy.
Suddenly, a weird golden cat with spinning clock eyes appeared out of nowhere in the garage with me. I yelped in surprise and stumbled backward, knocking my head on a hanging light. Catnip bags came tumbling down on top of me, adding to the mess I'd already cleaned up. While rubbing the back of my head, the golden cat hissed at me. Despite its striking appearance, I couldn't help but think to myself that there was no way this cat was actually Ra. The cat had all of its hairs standing up, its back arched, and its sparkling crystalline fangs bared at me.
"Ra!" I hissed back at the cat. I reached out to shoo it away, but something strange happened. It let out a meow that sounded like it was about to speak words. Then, I felt a strange sensation as a sound wave rippled through the room. The lights shattered, and everything started to fly off the shelves.
A surge of warm electricity coursed through me. I didn't know what was happening, but I could feel the energy radiating through my blood and bones and tips of my fingers and toes. Meanwhile, the strange gold cat had dimmed to a dull orange and was throwing a tantrum, spinning around and tearing up bags of catnip before running out of the room and down the hallway.
I was left standing there, feeling like a bolt of lightning had just passed through me. I didn't understand what had just happened, but as much as I wanted to clean up the mess, rescuing the clock-eyed cat was way more important.
As I chased the cat down the hallway, I was struck by the intricate carvings on the walls. This hadn't been there before. Usually that was just a plain jane white hallway. I hesitated to wonder where all this stuff had come from, but shrugged that thought away as well. Egyptian iconography, long lost to time, adorned the limestone walls, depicting scenes of feline gods and goddesses. Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead, was shown weighing the hearts of the deceased against a feather. Bastet, the feline goddess of protection, was depicted with her claws unsheathed, ready to defend her followers against any who would threaten them. The hallway itself seemed to twist and turn in on itself, like a labyrinthine temple.
As I entered the strangely embellished cat lounge, I was struck by the cozy and inviting atmosphere that hadn't been there before. The walls were adorned with holographic images of Egyptian gods, their glowing forms seeming to dance and shimmer in the dim light. The air was filled with the soothing hum of advanced air filtration systems, keeping the space free of allergens and pollutants. The furniture was sleek and modern, with plush cushions and soft, faux fur coverings.
In one corner, a group of cats lounged on a platform adorned with intricate hieroglyphs, their eyes closed in contentment as they soaked up the warmth of a futuristic heating system. Another group of cats played with high-tech toys that emitted colorful lights and sounds, their playful antics made me smile and want to tumble down and play with them.
The space was a harmonious blend of futuristic technology and ancient Egyptian aesthetics, creating a unique and welcoming environment that felt both modern and timeless. I couldn't help but feel a sense of awe as I looked around, marveling at the beauty and ingenuity of the space while also wondering how I had not noticed whoever put all this stuff there.
At the end of the corridor, I could see a faint light emanating from a door carved with the likeness of Bastet. The door was made of a strange, shimmering metal that seemed to pulse with a faint light. As I approached and reached out to touch the door, I was struck by a strange sensation - it was as if I could feel the power of the goddess coursing through my veins. For a moment, I felt invincible, as if nothing could harm me. But then, as quickly as it had come, the feeling was gone, leaving me feeling empty and alone.
Despite my initial thought that the clock-eyed cat could be Ra, I knew deep down that it was impossible. The cat was too small, too ordinary to be a god. But as I looked around me at the ancient carvings and futuristic architecture, I couldn't help but wonder if there was more to this place than met the eye. Perhaps, in some way, the garage had fused with a temple to Bastet - a place where her followers could come to seek protection and guidance in a world that had long since forgotten the ancient ways.
The orange cat ran out of the room and headbutted a fire escape crash bar on a door. Fire alarm klaxons blared, scaring the cats to scurry all over the place. Above the blaring fire alarms and mewling cats, I could hear the distant music of a piano, bass, and violin in my earbuds fighting against the song of the sirens. Looking at the time clock on the wall to my right, I took a deep breath and said to myself, "I gotta save the Kittens. No matter what!" The excitement got my breathing a bit too fast. Electric tingles trickled up my fingertips.
As I caught my breath, I noticed my favorite teal hoodie hanging on a hook. It was the softest thing in the garage (other than the cats) and always brought me comfort. The intricate patterns woven into the fabric mesmerized me, reminding me of the veins a gentle, persistent stream bores into soil or stone.
As I clocked out, the monotone voice of the time clock reminded me, "You have thirty minutes for lunch, Aktaly." Sigh.
Stepping outside, I was greeted by a teal and violet sky that hung over an oil-stricken river lined with brambles and sycamore trees. The plastic trash balls that tumbled across the causeway leading to a broken bridge were an all-too-familiar sight. 3D printed coffin towers ate up most of Neo-Babylon's horizon. Each tower had solar-powered drone ports lifting cargo from them and buzzing like flies. Madam Zoe's wise, old face was painted along each tower, but the eyes were all scratched out.
It had been my routine on lunch breaks to explore the hidden paths around the old sycamore tree. It was easy for me to chase Kittens across a half-full parking lot behind Madam Zoe's garage. I followed him towards the riverside bramble of trees to a familiar spot.
The violet sun shone down on us like the light of Pistis, illuminating our path through the tangle of the old sycamore tree. Kittens stopped to chew on some soft teal flowers and golden mushrooms that grew out of the base of the tree. Madam Zoe had a song about these symbols of the goddess Inanna's power over nature. I plucked a few petals and mushrooms to nibble on and honor her as I settled down in my secret spot.
Mellow tones from pianos and violins distracted me as I searched for a song that would make me whole. One addiction had replaced another. Searching for a song that didn't exist kept me craving with no way to fix my fix. Some scabs felt better to remain perpetually fresh.
Five years ago, I had finally sobered up after rehab and started working for Madam Zoe, the greatest musical composer in Neo-Babylon as a halfway house kind of deal. I had been an assistant for the care of her music transcriptions ever since she had lost her sight. But, someone better inevitably came along and I was demoted to care for her cats and cars. I still wasn't sure how to make a difference beyond keeping litter boxes tidy, playing with the cats, and keeping them fed.
With a deep breath, I closed my eyes and let the music carry me away. For the next few minutes, I melted into the melodies and rhythms of a string adagio, feeling more whole than I had in a long time. In that peaceful moment, I thought about the song I had been dreaming of for eternity. The sounds and vibrations called to me, pulling me toward some deep, distant plane of existence. In this world, every face and facet held a crest or trough in the waveform that harmonized with the universe. I yearned to compose a song that would let me become one with everything. Whispers of this song would visit me in fleeting moments and right before I would nod off and out, urging me to unlock its secrets.
As Kittens approached me with a meow, I couldn't resist giving him some attention. "Look at you, ooooh!" I said, patting his head and ruffling his pointy, caracal ears. Kittens rubbed his face on my hands and crawled further into my lap. A warmth tingled from my knees to my elbows and right back down my spine. "See we can be friendly kittens."
Kittens let out a contented purr as I absentmindedly stroked his fur. My hands craved to flick a lighter or pop a topper, ever tempting me like an old flame. But I refused to give up control again. I took a deep breath of cool, fresh air and closed my eyes, listening to the rustle of leaves through sycamore trees and the soft adagio of strings.
Despite being one level above tone deaf, I had poured countless hours into studying and practicing music, determined to replicate the tones perfectly. As I reached for my synthesizer app on my phone, a surge of creative energy flowed through me.
But then, a deafening sonic boom shook the ground. Startled, Kittens leapt up, clawing at my favorite hoodie. As I cursed and tried to calm the frightened feline, a bloody slit opened up in the sky, revealing a portal to distant Bronze Saturnus and its icy rings.
The sight reminded me of Inanna, who had once traveled to Saturnus to aid its defense against the Marzans through a similar crimson star gate.
But this time, instead of a Goddess, a swarm of huge, shimmering dragons poured out, their scales reflecting the light of the violet sun. Behind them, I caught a glimpse of something darker and even more massive than all the dragons combined, looming closer and closer as if pushing the invaders towards us.
"What in the world?" I gasped, my eyes wide with disbelief. But instead of succumbing to panic, I quickly shifted my attention to something playful. "Kittens!" I exclaimed, grabbing the stray cat on my lap and cuddling him close. "Do you think those dragons like catnip?" I asked, giggling as I rubbed his belly. Kittens let out a happy purr, and I could feel my anxiety slowly dissipating for the moment at least.
The dragons soon answered my question with an onslaught of green lightning. Their beams sliced through the pale coffin towers at a 45-degree angle. But even as they wreaked havoc, I kept my focus on Kittens, determined not to let the chaos consume me.
The feeling of two fingertips rubbing against each other, that uncanny sensation of mirrored texture, billowed through the air, leaving a weight upon every single breath as if a ghost was getting close.
"Nope!" My bony behind scurried back out of the bramble branches with Kittens still in my arms. I pushed through the tangle, ignoring the cuts, scrapes, and bruises the tree and cat carved into me. My coping method wasn't perfect, but it had helped me avoid a panic attack.
In the parking lot behind the garage, a few dozen people were all recording videos of the dragons in the sky. I tried to look skyward but got all spinny and nauseous at the red slit widening in the sky and dripping with shimmering space dragons. I stumbled down right in the middle of the sidewalk. Kittens hopped away only to become mesmerized by the celestial sights. His little kitty mouth was even hanging open with a bit of drool dangling.
A bicyclist zoomed down the sidewalk. I looked up in time to realize they were about to hit the distracted cat! "No!"
I rolled into the path of the bicyclist to shield the poor kitty. The bicyclist ran into my back and crashed. "Watch out!" yelled the bicyclist once it was already too late, as their head smeared the sidewalk with a fresh coat of blue. Blue blood? Aye, yai. I shouldn't have eaten those mushrooms.
Spikes of pain bloomed on my face and back, scrapes widened as my body roiled. But I had saved Kittens! Oh yeah!
I jumped up and spun around with Kittens in my arms. Our happy moment was quickly interrupted by some people yelling in the parking lot. "Hey, hey, what the, where is my signal?" was echoed from the mouths of all the rubbernecking videographers.
"Down for you too?" said some dude.
"Yeah, why don't you fix it?" said a dudette.
Then, some hobo dude ran up and stole the other dude's bike that had crashed into me, "Haha, all you stupid phone people, your reckoning's come! We're all going to Kur, but not me because-"
Suddenly, one of the shimmering dragons landed in the parking lot, crushing cars and squashing people, including the hobo and his contraband bicycle.
Rather than roar, this huge diamond-scaled beast screamed toward Kittens, who approached the dragon without any fear and meowed right back at him.
The sight triggered my amygdala, and it blasted me with cortisol. I froze up, unable to move or think. I was lock-jointed while my lips pursed for a cigarette. My heart pounded in my chest. I realized that the invasion was just the beginning. The real danger lay beyond the portal, waiting to consume everything in its path. If the dragon meant us harm, nothing would have stopped it, but no, it screamed out in pain with
The sight triggered my amygdala, and it blasted me with cortisol. I froze up, unable to move or think. I was lock-jointed while my lips pursed for a cigarette. My heart pounded in my chest. I realized that the invasion was just the beginning. The real danger lay beyond the portal, waiting to consume everything in its path. If the dragon meant us harm, nothing would have stopped it, but no, it screamed out in pain with a sharp, crystalline grating scream.
The dragon's scales reflected the violet light of the sun and the crimson slit in the sky. Disoriented, I tried to snap out of it, to take action, but all my cortisol paralyzed me still. The ground shook violently as the dragon screamed even louder, straight up into the sky, as its brethren soared above.
Kittens ran back and hopped into my arms right as a rush of air lifted me off the ground. I braced myself for the worst, but then I felt the warm, scaly tail of the dragon wrap around me and Kittens, pulling us towards its jaws. I held the cat close to my chest, trying to protect him with my body as much as possible.
As we approached the dragon's mouth, I couldn't help but think of the old sycamore tree and how close to peace I had been in those moments. And how fast all of it had been torn away. But before my life could flash before my eyes, a familiar aroma distracted me from my impending doom: toasted bread.
I opened my eyes to see the silhouette of a person holding a bagel standing in a portal that floated in the dragon's mouth. A voice came from the portal, sounding worried and confused. "Oh dear, you look like her, but you're not her. Oh, dear, oh my, this is not good."
"Hey, you! What the hell is going on?" I shouted, hoping for some answers.
"Come, receive a chance that the rest of your species shall not. If you survive the procedure, that is. Bring her in, Pep." There was a beep-boop-bop, and then the dragon's tail reeled me in with smooth, mechanical cranking towards the portal.
I held onto Kittens tightly, assuring him that everything was going to be okay. But deep down, I knew that no one was going to come save me from this bizarre situation. As we were pulled closer to the portal, I looked up and saw a face beyond that I would never forget.
A handsome, saturnine man in his fifties, at least seven feet tall with five green eyes that had bronze pupils and violet flame-like irises in between two diamond spiral horns. He had red, leathery, rune-scarred skin and wore a golden bathrobe while holding a pumpernickel rye bagel. An aura of teal light shimmered an inch above his body, and as he looked down at me, I couldn't help but feel a shiver run down my spine and through every hair on my body.
I wondered what I had gotten myself into. The answer lay ahead, beyond the portal, and I had no choice but to refrain from having a panic attack and find out.

Hi ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of this week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter. .

1. STAT OF THE WEEK: The percentage of online BNPL transactions involving groceries grew 40% during the first two months of 2023. – According to Adobe Analytics .
2. Pinterest is bringing more to the e-commerce table with the integration of shopping capabilities into its Shuffles collage-making app -- identical to those found on regular pins. Shuffles launched to the public last November, allowing users to create aesthetic collages set to music, which they could share on TikTok or with friends on the app. Pinterest is also exploring a new takeover feature for advertisers called “Pinterest Premiere Spotlight” that prominently showcases a brand on search. .
3. YouTube revealed that more than 100,000 channels on its platform are linked to external e-commerce stores. Like Pinterest, YouTube has been making bold moves into e-commerce this past year including integrating with Shopify in July 2022, expanding its access to social shopping tools in Oct 2022, and releasing new features for Shorts including affiliate marketing and the ability to tag and purchase items in Nov 2022. .
4. It's no secret that big tech has been / is guilty of utilizing dark patterns to get what they want out of you. Amazon had to make it easier for Prime members to cancel their subscriptions last July, following complaints from consumer groups about the numerous hurdles it took to cancel the service. Epic Games was fined $520M in December in part for using dark patterns to coerce players into making unwanted in-game purchases. Block recently came under heat for making it difficult to opt-out of marketing e-mails from brands you've never shopped with before by employing dark pattern designs to bury the opt-out link. There's even a dark pattern named after Mark Zuckerberg called “Zuckering” which fools users into thinking that they need to share certain private information, even if it is not necessary to use the service. Digital Information World put together a guide showcasing the 12 different types of dark patterns which include 1) Trick Questions, 2) Sneak Into Basket, 3) Roach Motel, 4) Privacy Zucking, 5) Price Comparison Prevention, 6) Misdirection, 7) Hidden Costs, 8) Bait & Switch, 9) Confirmshaming, 10) Disguised Ads, 11) Forced Continuity, and 12) Friend Spam. .
5. DoorDash added three new partners including Lush Cosmetics, Victoria's Secret, and Party City (which still exists). They also improved their search and discovery to make it easier to search within a retail store, released the ability to schedule ahead to more consumers, made substituting out-of-stock items easier with a built-in messaging automation, and enabled cash on delivery for restuarants using their white-label delivery solution. .
6. The e-commerce acceleration platform MikMak released their “2023 Grocery eCommerce Benchmarks and Insights Report” which took a look at the top-performing grocery retailers. They found that YouTube has the highest purchase intent for grocery brands at 5.2% and Pinterest had the second highest at 4.2%. Walmart drives the most in-market traffic for grocery brands at 41.2% followed by Target (22.1%), Amazon (18.6%), Instacart (11.9%), and Kroger (6.1%). Grocery shoppers are most likely to buy online Thursday at 1pm EST and their top purchases include snack mix, sliced cheese, and single-serve coffees. .
7. Instagram began testing ads in search results, which will show up in the feed that people can scroll when they tap into a post from search results. The company says that the change is just a test for now, but that it plans on launching the new placement globally in the coming months. They are also rolling out a new ad type called “Reminder Ads” which send push notifications to remind you of an upcoming event or important date — if, and only if, you opt in to receive them. For example, an ad for a season premiere of a show may include a “Remind Me” button that the user can click to receive a notification reminder one day before it airs, 15 minutes before it airs, and at the start time. .
8. Short seller Hindenburg Research alleged that Block, under the leadership of Jack Dorsey, widely overstated its genuine user counts and understated its customer acquisition cost, and that its “Wild West” approach to compliance made it easy for bad actors to mass-create accounts for identity fraud and other scams. Hindenburg said in its report that former Block employees estimated that 40% to 75% of accounts they reviewed were fake, involved in fraud, or were multiple accounts tied to a single person. In response to the news, Block's share price dropped over 15% to $60.18 on Friday, but has since rebounded around 4% at the time of writing this newsletter. Block responded to the news by vowing to fight back, saying it would explore legal action against the short seller for its “factually inaccurate and misleading report” that was “designed to deceive and confuse investors”. .
9. Walmart laid off hundreds of workers at e-commerce facilities in Pedricktown NJ, Fort Worth TX, Chino CA, Davenport FL, and Bethlehem PA. Walmart did not comment on whether it is downsizing its fulfillment center capacity because it plans to fulfill more orders from stores or because it anticipates fewer online orders from customers. .
10. Packsize unveiled a new machine designed to build on-demand, perfect-sized boxes exclusively for Walmart to help ship faster, produce less waste, and create a better unboxing experience for customers. The Ultra5 can produce up to 600 boxes/hour, negates the need for filler like plastic air pillows, and allows retailers to fit up to 33% more boxes in freight and delivery carriers. .
11. Amazon shot down a petition signed by 30,000 workers begging CEO Andy Jassy to cancel his return-to-office plan. In the petition, Amazon workers argued that they are more productive and enjoy a better work-life balance in a remote work environment. .
12. Adobe introduced a new cloud service called Adobe Product Analytics that helps companies find opportunities to improve their applications and websites. At the annual Adobe Summit conference, the company also debuted several other new offerings including a suite of generative AI models called Firefly which enables customers to generate images and stylized fonts based on text prompts. .
13. Did you see the TikTok video of the Amazon driver in Cary NC who delivered a package during a police standoff with an armed hostage-taker? He even took a picture of the package to confirm its delivery before heading back out on his route! .
14. Klarna announced its integration with ChatGPT to roll out a personalized shopping experience that provides product recommendations when users ask for shopping advice, inspiration, and product links via their search and compare tool. Users can ask things like, “I have $150, which headphones can I afford?” and receive a selection of items relevant to that request. .
15. Google suspended the Pinduoduo app after malware was found in versions of the software which exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Android. E-commerce expert Liu Huafang posted on Weibo that Pinduoduo’s app was using security vulnerabilities to gain market share by stealing user data from its competitors. .
16. Employers in the EU will be to soon be legally obligated to publish the salary ranges of jobs in their listing descriptions as part of efforts to reduce the gender pay gap. Roderic O’Gorman, the Minister for Children and Equality, confirmed that he intends to implement the pay transparency rules within the EU’s three-year deadline. .
17. Levi Strauss & Co. announced a new partnership with LaLaLand.ai to supplement human models later this year with AI-generated models. Lalaland utilizes AI to enable fashion brands to use realistic models of every body type, age, size, and skin tone to create a more “inclusive, personal, and sustainable shopping experience.” .
18. Automattic announced the discovery and patch of a critical vulnerability in the WooCommerce Payments plugin that allows for a full-site takeover by unauthenticated attackers. The vulnerability was discovered on March 22, 2023 by a third party security researcher and affects more than 500k WordPress installs. .
19. Unzer, a Germany-based payment processor, launched a new BNPL product called upaylater, where it is integrating invoice and installment payment methods and direct debit into its product portfolio via a single interface. Meanwhile another Germany-based firm, Mondu, is opening an office in London after seeing growing demand from U.K. businesses for its B2B BNPL service. .
20. JFK8, the first Amazon warehouse to successfully vote to form a union last year, has yet to secure a contract or get Amazon to the bargaining table, blaming internal disagreements between union president Christian Smalls and some of the union's legacy organizers. Insiders accuse Smalls of failing to devote enough time to JFK8 efforts because he has been busy traveling to other Amazon warehouses, making public appearances at labor protests, and speaking at events. .
21. YouTube is shutting down its live social commerce app, Simsim, less than two years after acquiring the Indian startup for around $70M. A spokesperson said Thursday that the company will be “working with creators to introduce more monetization opportunities for creators through an affiliate program and more shopping features across long-form videos, Shorts and livestreams on YouTube in 2023.” .
22. In May, Amazon will launch test versions of their Kuiper satellites to take on SpaceX's Starlink. Amazon recently revealed that it had essentially bought all the spare rocket launch capacity in the world to rival SpaceX, and plans to launch a total of 3,236 satellites by 2029. .
23. Zumi, a B2B e-commerce startup, is shutting down and laid off its team of 150 people, after failing to raise the funding necessary to sustain its operations. The company was on a mission to revolutionize Africa's $36B apparel market, but will now have to bow out of the scene to competitors like MarketForce and Sabi. .
24. Australia Post is unveiling a changing room concept for customers to try on their online purchases before deciding to keep items or return them. The new concept will be installed at the Australia Post office in Orange, NSW in July, where the post office will also allocate space to local retailers to showcase their products. .
25. Rewind, a backup and recovery platform for Shopify, BigCommerce, and other e-commerce platforms, laid off about 27% of its staff, or around 37 employees, after seeing lower-than-anticipated growth. (Those Reddit ads not working as well as they had hoped? Mine neither.) The company announced a $19M CAD Series A round in January 2021, acquired BackHub a month later, and then had an $83M Series B round in September that same year, but now says that their growth has slowed inline with Shopify's slowed growth. .
26. Amazon is shutting down DPReview, a 25-year-old photography community website that it purchased in 2007. The website's millions of articles will not be kept by Amazon, but should be available on the Internet Archive. The site will be locked with no further updates after April 10th. .
27. Panera is partnering with Amazon One to use its palm swipe technology for buying food and earning rewards for its loyalty program. The partnership will allow MyPanera members to leave their cash, cards, and mobile devices at home and simply swipe their palm to pay for their meals with saved payment info. .
28. Peloton owners in Australia who paid in installments with Affirm will get to keep their equipment but no longer have to pay after Affirm ceases operations in the country. Peloton was Affirm's only business partner in Australia, and a spokesperson said that forgiving the loans would have a nominal impact on the business. .
29. Meta announced a new WhatsApp desktop application for Windows that will enable end-to-end encrypted group video calls with up to 8 people and calls with up to 32 people. They also claim that the app offers faster device linking and better syncing across devices, as well as new features such as link previews and stickers. .
30. Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Kream's $168M Series C. .

For more details on each story, see the full edition: https://www.shopifreaks.com/block-vs-short-sellers-instagram-ads-dark-patterns/
What else is new in e-commerce?
Share stories of interesting in the comments below (including in your own business) or on shopifreaks.
See you next week.
-PAUL

Hi ecommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry pretty closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of this week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter.
.

1. STAT OF THE WEEK: The percentage of online BNPL transactions involving groceries grew 40% during the first two months of 2023. – According to Adobe Analytics .
2. Pinterest is bringing more to the e-commerce table with the integration of shopping capabilities into its Shuffles collage-making app -- identical to those found on regular pins. Shuffles launched to the public last November, allowing users to create aesthetic collages set to music, which they could share on TikTok or with friends on the app. Pinterest is also exploring a new takeover feature for advertisers called “Pinterest Premiere Spotlight” that prominently showcases a brand on search. .
3. YouTube revealed that more than 100,000 channels on its platform are linked to external e-commerce stores. Like Pinterest, YouTube has been making bold moves into e-commerce this past year including integrating with Shopify in July 2022, expanding its access to social shopping tools in Oct 2022, and releasing new features for Shorts including affiliate marketing and the ability to tag and purchase items in Nov 2022. .
4. It's no secret that big tech has been / is guilty of utilizing dark patterns to get what they want out of you. Amazon had to make it easier for Prime members to cancel their subscriptions last July, following complaints from consumer groups about the numerous hurdles it took to cancel the service. Epic Games was fined $520M in December in part for using dark patterns to coerce players into making unwanted in-game purchases. Block recently came under heat for making it difficult to opt-out of marketing e-mails from brands you've never shopped with before by employing dark pattern designs to bury the opt-out link. There's even a dark pattern named after Mark Zuckerberg called “Zuckering” which fools users into thinking that they need to share certain private information, even if it is not necessary to use the service. Digital Information World put together a guide showcasing the 12 different types of dark patterns which include 1) Trick Questions, 2) Sneak Into Basket, 3) Roach Motel, 4) Privacy Zucking, 5) Price Comparison Prevention, 6) Misdirection, 7) Hidden Costs, 8) Bait & Switch, 9) Confirmshaming, 10) Disguised Ads, 11) Forced Continuity, and 12) Friend Spam. .
5. DoorDash added three new partners including Lush Cosmetics, Victoria's Secret, and Party City (which still exists). They also improved their search and discovery to make it easier to search within a retail store, released the ability to schedule ahead to more consumers, made substituting out-of-stock items easier with a built-in messaging automation, and enabled cash on delivery for restuarants using their white-label delivery solution. .
6. The e-commerce acceleration platform MikMak released their “2023 Grocery eCommerce Benchmarks and Insights Report” which took a look at the top-performing grocery retailers. They found that YouTube has the highest purchase intent for grocery brands at 5.2% and Pinterest had the second highest at 4.2%. Walmart drives the most in-market traffic for grocery brands at 41.2% followed by Target (22.1%), Amazon (18.6%), Instacart (11.9%), and Kroger (6.1%). Grocery shoppers are most likely to buy online Thursday at 1pm EST and their top purchases include snack mix, sliced cheese, and single-serve coffees. .
7. Instagram began testing ads in search results, which will show up in the feed that people can scroll when they tap into a post from search results. The company says that the change is just a test for now, but that it plans on launching the new placement globally in the coming months. They are also rolling out a new ad type called “Reminder Ads” which send push notifications to remind you of an upcoming event or important date — if, and only if, you opt in to receive them. For example, an ad for a season premiere of a show may include a “Remind Me” button that the user can click to receive a notification reminder one day before it airs, 15 minutes before it airs, and at the start time. .
8. Short seller Hindenburg Research alleged that Block, under the leadership of Jack Dorsey, widely overstated its genuine user counts and understated its customer acquisition cost, and that its “Wild West” approach to compliance made it easy for bad actors to mass-create accounts for identity fraud and other scams. Hindenburg said in its report that former Block employees estimated that 40% to 75% of accounts they reviewed were fake, involved in fraud, or were multiple accounts tied to a single person. In response to the news, Block's share price dropped over 15% to $60.18 on Friday, but has since rebounded around 4% at the time of writing this newsletter. Block responded to the news by vowing to fight back, saying it would explore legal action against the short seller for its “factually inaccurate and misleading report” that was “designed to deceive and confuse investors”. .
9. Walmart laid off hundreds of workers at e-commerce facilities in Pedricktown NJ, Fort Worth TX, Chino CA, Davenport FL, and Bethlehem PA. Walmart did not comment on whether it is downsizing its fulfillment center capacity because it plans to fulfill more orders from stores or because it anticipates fewer online orders from customers. .
10. Packsize unveiled a new machine designed to build on-demand, perfect-sized boxes exclusively for Walmart to help ship faster, produce less waste, and create a better unboxing experience for customers. The Ultra5 can produce up to 600 boxes/hour, negates the need for filler like plastic air pillows, and allows retailers to fit up to 33% more boxes in freight and delivery carriers. .
11. Amazon shot down a petition signed by 30,000 workers begging CEO Andy Jassy to cancel his return-to-office plan. In the petition, Amazon workers argued that they are more productive and enjoy a better work-life balance in a remote work environment. .
12. Adobe introduced a new cloud service called Adobe Product Analytics that helps companies find opportunities to improve their applications and websites. At the annual Adobe Summit conference, the company also debuted several other new offerings including a suite of generative AI models called Firefly which enables customers to generate images and stylized fonts based on text prompts. .
13. Did you see the TikTok video of the Amazon driver in Cary NC who delivered a package during a police standoff with an armed hostage-taker? He even took a picture of the package to confirm its delivery before heading back out on his route! .
14. Klarna announced its integration with ChatGPT to roll out a personalized shopping experience that provides product recommendations when users ask for shopping advice, inspiration, and product links via their search and compare tool. Users can ask things like, “I have $150, which headphones can I afford?” and receive a selection of items relevant to that request. .
15. Google suspended the Pinduoduo app after malware was found in versions of the software which exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Android. E-commerce expert Liu Huafang posted on Weibo that Pinduoduo’s app was using security vulnerabilities to gain market share by stealing user data from its competitors. .
16. Employers in the EU will be to soon be legally obligated to publish the salary ranges of jobs in their listing descriptions as part of efforts to reduce the gender pay gap. Roderic O’Gorman, the Minister for Children and Equality, confirmed that he intends to implement the pay transparency rules within the EU’s three-year deadline. .
17. Levi Strauss & Co. announced a new partnership with LaLaLand.ai to supplement human models later this year with AI-generated models. Lalaland utilizes AI to enable fashion brands to use realistic models of every body type, age, size, and skin tone to create a more “inclusive, personal, and sustainable shopping experience.” .
18. Automattic announced the discovery and patch of a critical vulnerability in the WooCommerce Payments plugin that allows for a full-site takeover by unauthenticated attackers. The vulnerability was discovered on March 22, 2023 by a third party security researcher and affects more than 500k WordPress installs. .
19. Unzer, a Germany-based payment processor, launched a new BNPL product called upaylater, where it is integrating invoice and installment payment methods and direct debit into its product portfolio via a single interface. Meanwhile another Germany-based firm, Mondu, is opening an office in London after seeing growing demand from U.K. businesses for its B2B BNPL service. .
20. JFK8, the first Amazon warehouse to successfully vote to form a union last year, has yet to secure a contract or get Amazon to the bargaining table, blaming internal disagreements between union president Christian Smalls and some of the union's legacy organizers. Insiders accuse Smalls of failing to devote enough time to JFK8 efforts because he has been busy traveling to other Amazon warehouses, making public appearances at labor protests, and speaking at events. .
21. YouTube is shutting down its live social commerce app, Simsim, less than two years after acquiring the Indian startup for around $70M. A spokesperson said Thursday that the company will be “working with creators to introduce more monetization opportunities for creators through an affiliate program and more shopping features across long-form videos, Shorts and livestreams on YouTube in 2023.” .
22. In May, Amazon will launch test versions of their Kuiper satellites to take on SpaceX's Starlink. Amazon recently revealed that it had essentially bought all the spare rocket launch capacity in the world to rival SpaceX, and plans to launch a total of 3,236 satellites by 2029. .
23. Zumi, a B2B e-commerce startup, is shutting down and laid off its team of 150 people, after failing to raise the funding necessary to sustain its operations. The company was on a mission to revolutionize Africa's $36B apparel market, but will now have to bow out of the scene to competitors like MarketForce and Sabi. .
24. Australia Post is unveiling a changing room concept for customers to try on their online purchases before deciding to keep items or return them. The new concept will be installed at the Australia Post office in Orange, NSW in July, where the post office will also allocate space to local retailers to showcase their products. .
25. Rewind, a backup and recovery platform for Shopify, BigCommerce, and other e-commerce platforms, laid off about 27% of its staff, or around 37 employees, after seeing lower-than-anticipated growth. (Those Reddit ads not working as well as they had hoped? Mine neither.) The company announced a $19M CAD Series A round in January 2021, acquired BackHub a month later, and then had an $83M Series B round in September that same year, but now says that their growth has slowed inline with Shopify's slowed growth. .
26. Amazon is shutting down DPReview, a 25-year-old photography community website that it purchased in 2007. The website's millions of articles will not be kept by Amazon, but should be available on the Internet Archive. The site will be locked with no further updates after April 10th. .
27. Panera is partnering with Amazon One to use its palm swipe technology for buying food and earning rewards for its loyalty program. The partnership will allow MyPanera members to leave their cash, cards, and mobile devices at home and simply swipe their palm to pay for their meals with saved payment info. .
28. Peloton owners in Australia who paid in installments with Affirm will get to keep their equipment but no longer have to pay after Affirm ceases operations in the country. Peloton was Affirm's only business partner in Australia, and a spokesperson said that forgiving the loans would have a nominal impact on the business. .
29. Meta announced a new WhatsApp desktop application for Windows that will enable end-to-end encrypted group video calls with up to 8 people and calls with up to 32 people. They also claim that the app offers faster device linking and better syncing across devices, as well as new features such as link previews and stickers. .
30. Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Kream's $168M Series C .

I hope you find this news recap helpful. See you next week!
-PAUL

This will be a very long post with a lot of information. To make it easier to navigate, I have divided it into sections so you can easily skip to the parts you’re interested in. But to start, here’s a link to the Kickstarter I’ll be discussing: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/phoenixgrey/lewd-dungeon-adventures-a-role-playing-game-for-couples

Expectations versus Reality

Since this was my first Kickstarter ever, my expectations weren’t particularly high. I had originally set my funding goal at $500 and would have considered the Kickstarter a success if it made $10,000. I would have considered it a big success if it made $30,000.
When the Kickstarter hit $100,000, I literally cried. Never in a million years did I dream it would make it all the way to $250,000.
Because my goal was set so low, I did what everyone told me not to do. I had a lot of physical items with the Kickstarter. When the Kickstarter blew up, this later became somewhat of a regret because it complicated everything so much and added a bunch of additional expenses I hadn’t prepared for. Which brings me to my next section, and the very first thing you should do before you launch your Kickstarter.

Planning and Pricing Accordingly

There is a lot of conflicting information about whether you should price your products at a discount, at retail pricing, or above retail pricing (to accommodate for all the extra expenses that come with running a Kickstarter(and depending on what you’re offering, there can be a lot)). I had originally planned on discounting all of my tiers, but an author friend advised me not to, and boy, am I glad I didn’t.
Expenses you need to take into consideration besides manufacturing: Kickstarter fees, Backerkit fees (if you decide to use them), Marketing agency fees (if you decide to use them), shipping fees for physical products (I’m talking about actual postage, not just packaging), customs/VAT (if you plan to pay it), warehouse fees (if you plan to use one).
The first three on the list are fees that companies don’t have to pay once the product goes to retail, which is typically why you see the price of a Kickstarted project being more than what it will be when it hits retail.
I consider myself pretty business-savvy and thought I had everything figured out before I launched. I did not. Lol I never anticipated that I would need a warehouse. Nor did I account for the shipping costs of having physical products shipped to me (paperbacks to sign, candles to label) or shipping them to the warehouse, which was a lot. By the end of everything, I incurred an extra $12,700 in unanticipated expenses. My boyfriend calls it ‘the learning tax,’ but it was damned expensive. This is all to say that you should go over your numbers, then go over them again, then probably do it a third time before you launch.
If you plan to use a marketing company…or even do marketing yourself, it’s important to know what your ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) will be so that you don’t sink all your profits into ads. Here’s a great article on calculating that number: https://help.backerkit.com/article/608-guide-to-setting-your-target-roas The basic equation is Average pledge divided by Margin per pledge = Break even ROAS.
Another big mistake I made was that I only had Stretch Goals planned up to $150k, which I had already thought was a pipe dream. I had them all the way up to $150k despite thinking I’d only make $30k max because I had seen other TTRPGs make around $100k, and I thought it was better to plan for more than for less. Everything you see on my Kickstarter page past $150k is Stretch Goals that were created as I went.
For most of my planning, I looked at Kickstarters similar to mine and tried to copy what they were doing. As the saying goes, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. But I also knew that a lot goes into a Kickstarter beforehand. To learn about that, I bought the book Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter by Russell P. Nohelty and Monica Leonelle because it was recommended to me by an author friend. I did most of the stuff in the book but not everything, even though I wasn’t Kickstarting a book. I feel like the marketing stuff for Kickstarters is pretty much the same no matter what you’re trying to Kickstart.
This next tip is going to be specific to TTRPGs and really doesn’t belong anywhere else in this post, so I’m leaving it here. If you are creating your own TTRPG system and can offer up a Kickstarter-exclusive conversion to another popular system, like Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, do it. I leveraged this to the tune of about $100k in sales that I probably wouldn’t have made if I hadn’t done it. Doing this is kind of like creating an insurance policy for your Kickstarter.
Things I did this time: Priced at retail.
Things I’m doing differently next time: Pricing above retail. Why? Because I have an incredibly low-cost product, and even by increasing my prices, with all of the Stretch Goal and Early Bird reward stuff I’m offering, people who pledge are still getting way below the retail price for all of it combined. Plus, it helps to offset Kickstarter, Backerkit, Marketing, and any unplanned fees.
One of the biggest reasons why Kickstarter creators run out of funds and can’t deliver their products is because they don’t financially plan correctly. This is a lot easier to do than you would think.

Building Social Media and a Mailing List

Whether you’re a fan of social media or not, it’s here to stay, and you will need it to run a successful Kickstarter. Lewd Dungeon Adventures had zero social media presence when I started all this. Ideally, you’ll want to start working on building social media for your product before you even go into Pre-Launch. I started maybe a week before Pre-Launch.
I created a Facebook Page and ran ads to build it quickly. To get followers to Twitter and Instagram, I created a giveaway that I posted primarily on Facebook that used people following the other two social media platforms as an entry into the contest. The prize was my highest tier on Kickstarter. I used the paid version of Gleam.io for this, and it did work decently. Much better than my original approach.
According to online research, the cheapest and fastest way to get Instagram followers is to follow people similar to your Instagram page. The theory is that a certain percentage will follow you back. Don’t do this. It’s a complete waste of time.
The Gleam contest also had a link to my mailing list to encourage sign-ups. But I mostly built that list through Facebook ads because it was much quicker and more effective. To build my mailing list, I gave away a playtest bare-bones no-color PDF copy of the Core Rulebook & Starter Adventure for my game in exchange for people signing up. In the book industry, this is a pretty tried and true method, and it didn’t fail me this time either. I believe that I had around 1,000 people subscribed to my mailing list by the time I launched.

Preparing for Pre-Launch

For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to go into all the nuances of using Kickstarter itself. But at the very basics, before you can pre-launch, you will need an image to represent your Kickstarter, ad copy (Your Story or sales pitch), and some tiers. You should also have a video trailer and an idea of whether or not you’re going to do Early Bird Rewards and have Add-Ons.
I did have the two covers for the two campaign books I was offering in my Kickstarter designed before I pre-launched, but those were literally the only art pieces I had. The entire reason I was Kickstarting the game was because hiring artists is expensive.
I decided to use the cover of The Core Rulebook & Starter Adventure as the main image for the Kickstarter. When you go on Kickstarter, you will see tons of main images with text, but Kickstarter advises against this because it doesn’t look good as a thumbnail. Using just an image was something that I was admittedly a bit nervous about, but I also knew that this was pretty standard practice with Facebook ads. Not long ago, they penalized ads that had text in them. I figured there were probably statistics backing up the success of non-text images, so I went with it.
Good cinematic video trailers are typically very expensive to have made. That’s part of why you see so many people just posting videos where they talk about their product. The other appeal is that it helps to connect the creator with the product, which builds consumer trust through feelings of familiarity, as if they are somehow connected with the creator on a deeper level. This is pretty solid marketing, so if you want to take this approach, by all means, do it. It works.
I actually hate being on camera, and I also didn’t want to spend the money to hire someone to make the video trailer for my game, so I learned how to make it myself. This was incredibly time-consuming. I spent close to a week making the trailer, and it still cost around $100 for the program I used and the assets. But I actually enjoy doing this kind of work, so it was worth the savings to me.
For my story (ad copy), I copied the format of several popular Kickstarters in my genre, leaving out what wasn’t relevant to my particular campaign. The first section always talks about what the product is and how it came to be. Telling that story helps to get people emotionally attached to your product. This section of your Kickstarter page should be honest and uniquely you and your product.
Though Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter had a section about Early Bird Rewards, at the time I was planning my Pre-Launch for Lewd Dungeon Adventures, I had only seen one Kickstarter that was offering Early Bird Rewards, and it was not difficult to figure out why. It is damn hard to come up with a lot of freebies to give away, especially as many as Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter suggests.
The whole point of doing this is mainly to get people to pledge early so that you get better placement on Kickstarter’s front page. Giving away free stuff also adds more value to your Kickstarter, which, theoretically, should make more people want to pledge. I do think this works, and I do plan to do it for every Kickstarter.
I wracked my brain trying to come up with Early Bird rewards, and even came up with a few that I was pretty sure most TTRPG players would not care about, like a collection of romance books. Admittedly, I am not planning to have as many Early Bird rewards this next time around, mostly because I really want to keep them relevant to my game.
For tiers, I looked at the top three TTRPGs on Kickstarter to see what they were offering, and then I modeled my own tiers around theirs. I strategically placed the 5e conversion of my game on a higher tier. My main goal was to sell my own system, so if people wanted the 5e version, they would have to buy the original version as well. This worked really well, and it is how I will be running future Kickstarters.
As mentioned in the previous section, I had Stretch Goals planned all the way to $150k. Honestly, I did a HORRIBLE job planning Stretch Goals. Without having fully created the product before launching, I assumed it would have X amount of art, so that’s what I promised with my Stretch Goals. When I actually created the finished product from playtester feedback, that number changed, so I did not deliver on all of my Stretch Goals and ended up making up for it by creating a compendium and sending that to all backers instead. This is all to say that if you’re going to offer something as a Stretch Goal, it’s best to know that you’ll be able to deliver what you say you will. Luckily, none of my backers were upset, but depending on your audience, that might not always be the case. Plan better than I did.
One thing I don’t regret doing was not revealing all of my Stretch Goals at once. The next Stretch Goal was only revealed after the previous one had been reached. This allowed me to modify things on the fly as necessary. It also hid from backers where the bar of funding was truly set. Had I only planned Stretch Goals to $30k and revealed that many right away, I might have seen backer decline after the final Stretch Goal was reached, as there would be nothing else to get excited about.
And finally, I wanted to discuss artwork for your Kickstarter. As mentioned above, I only had two pieces of artwork pre-designed for the Kickstarter. Everything else was screenshots from the interior pages of the game, things I’d made in Photoshop, or stock photos. If I’m being completely honest, aesthetically, my Kickstarter was ugly. You don’t need a pretty Kickstarter to make a lot of money; you just need a good product.

What I Did During Pre-launch

My Pre-Launch was a month long, and I mainly spent it building my mailing list and social media accounts. My Gleam contest also had an entry option for people to click Notify Me on Launch on my Pre-Launch page. Honestly, that’s probably where the vast majority of my Pre-Launch people came from. Aside from doing that, I went through Facebook and made a list of Kickstarter and TTRPG groups that allowed posting of Kickstarter Pre-Launch pages. I found 30 groups in total and posted ad copy with my link to 1 group a day. By the time I launched, I had about 180 Pre-Launch sign-ups, which isn’t great but not the worst either.
I read on a Kickstarter marketing website that having around 10,000 Pre-Launch sign-ups before you launch is best. Even for my upcoming Kickstarter, I currently only have about 800 sign-ups. If I’m lucky, I’ll have 1,000 by the time I launch.
The theory is that a certain percentage of your sign-ups will convert to backers on day 1 of launch, and you want a lot of backers right out of the gate so that your campaign will appear higher in the Kickstarter rankings. From my own experience, I don’t think you need a ton of Pre-Launch sign-ups to have a successful Kickstarter. Do they help? I’m sure they do, but I would not postpone my launch if I didn’t reach some magical target number.
Also, during this time, I worked on all of the emails and social media posts I would send out for hitting Stretch Goals and warning people that Early Bird rewards were about to expire. There was a lot. It took almost an entire day to write the majority of them. Some of them, I wrote on the fly. Still, having all of these written up in advance is a good idea so that it isn’t an added stressor after you launch.
The last big thing I did during pre-launch, which I firmly believe got me to $250k, was looking for a marketing partner, which I will discuss in the next section.
Things I did this time: Ran a Gleam contest to get Pre-Launch sign-ups.
Things I’m doing differently next time: Running Facebook ads directly to my Kickstarter pre-launch page.

Finding and Working With a Marketing Partner

If you look at the very bottom of the page of a Kickstarter that is making bank, you will often see a banner that says Promoted by ‘Insert Advertising Company Name Here.’ These companies have typically compiled massive mailing lists of backers for various projects and have marketing teams specializing in Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads.
As I’m writing this, the two biggest players in the game are Jellop and Backerkit, with Backerkit being the best. Yes, I said it. Backerkit is the best. Why? Because you don’t have to pay any advertising fees upfront. They won’t ask for that money until after your Kickstarter has ended and you have the funds. They also charge less than Jellop, 15% of the money they bring in as compared to a fluctuating 15%+ charged by Jellop.
Neither of these companies are big risk-takers. They typically do not take on a Kickstarter project unless they believe it has the potential to earn 6-figures. Backerkit is even pickier than Jellop.
Backerkit rejected my campaign when I submitted it. I honestly didn’t expect Jellop to accept, either. While I was a mid-tier author in 2 genres, I had never created a Kickstarter before. But Jellop said yes, and that was the first time I realized that reality would likely exceed my expectations of what my Kickstarter could fund for.
As I mentioned above, the problem with working with Jellop is that I had to come up with the funds to market my Kickstarter during launch…and they don’t play with small money. On day 1, you are expected to spend $400. That is the baseline, so you need to be able to maintain that spend for a few days until they can figure out if it’s worth putting more money into it or pulling back.
The great thing about both of these companies is that they meticulously watch your ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) and will adjust accordingly. They will also tell you how to optimize your Kickstarter pre-launch. I am currently working with Backerkit on the next Kickstarter. Yes, I switched teams for this one because I wanted the unlimited marketing budget. With that said, I will tell you what they made me change about my pre-launches so far.
Jellop: Made me change my launch date. I had scheduled for a Tuesday thanks to the advice in Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter saying that was the best day to launch. The problem is, that’s when all the biggies launch, so the competition is fierce. They said launching on a day when fewer people were launching was better, so they had me change my launch date from a Tuesday to a Friday. They also made me change my funding goal from $500 to $5,000. Let’s be honest, there was no way I could buy all the art I needed for $500…or pay for any of the other expenses to actually produce the product. I had planned to pay for that out of pocket if I didn’t reach my funding goal. But their reasoning was that setting my funding goal to $500 made the project look cheap. People don’t see a quality product when you set your funding goal that low.
Backerkit: On my current campaign, Backerkit asked me to raise my prices. Why? Because they want to maximize the amount of money we’ll both make. People who launch TTRPG Kickstarters typically charge way more than what I did for my last Kickstater. And to be completely honest, I gave waaay too much away for free last time. By raising my prices, both Backerkit and I will make more money, and backers will still be getting a better value than if they just bought the retail version of the product. Everyone still wins. They also asked me to change my launch date…from a Friday to a Tuesday. LOL Honestly, this Kickstarter hasn’t launched yet, so I have no idea what that will do, but I’m nervous about it. Backerkit specializes in TTRPGs, though, and they have a much bigger mailing list for them than Jellop, so I’m just going to go with it and see what happens.
Both companies require you to sign contracts and upload digital assets (images for them to use for their ads). Backerkit seemed to want these to be ready-made for them. Jellop took my game covers and made a few of their own. To be honest, the stuff I uploaded to Jellop wasn’t that great, but they did the best they could with what they had to work with. Both companies will give you your very own marketing rep.
My relationship with Backerkit Marketing has just started, but they’ve been great to work with so far. I don’t want to focus on them much because this post is supposed to be about my last Kickstarter, so for the rest of this section, I will focus exclusively on my partnership with Jellop.
Jellop gave me a marketing team and put me in a private chat with them. I was given a live dashboard to watch my stats as the Kickstarter was live. The team was very nice and professional during pre-launch. As soon as I launched, it literally became all about how much money I was willing to spend. Our relationship turned very impersonal, and I quickly realized it was all about the money and numbers. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it was a bit stressful as they pressured me to keep spending more because they saw the Kickstarter’s potential. Honestly, if I wasn’t limited to the 3 credit cards I was spending on, I could have made more than $250k, but I legit maxed out all 3 credit cards for a total ad spend of $35,000.
In the Jellop dashboard, there is a place to input your credit cards—a primary and a backup. I had thought that this was just for initial set-up and that I would talk to my marketing representative if I needed to update these later on in the process. I had a large expense coming to the main credit card I was using. When I told my marketing rep to update my credit card in their system, she said she would and never did. This got me into financial trouble as I ended up maxing out the credit card, which put a halt on my ads. They did not ever apologize for this, even though I got pretty pissed off about it. It was not until later that I learned it was up to me to update my credit cards in their system for whatever I wanted them to spend on. This was never told to me, by the way, I had to figure it out on my own. Ultimately, it was a big miscommunication, but it was handled very coldly and left a bad taste in my mouth.
The only other thing I disliked about working with them was the constant pressure to up my ad spend despite the strain on my personal finances. They tried to convince me to apply for more financing or take out a loan. And let me tell you, before I got paid from Kickstarter, I was very poor from how much money I had poured into advertising.
I am also somewhat convinced that they take credit for sales they did not generate, as the amount credited to them in their dashboard overlapped with what was generated by Kickstarter, but with the vast amount of money the Kickstarter generated because of their efforts, if they were skimming, it wasn’t enough that I particularly cared.
And I do know that they’re responsible for the vast majority of the success I saw. I know this because I cut ads with them for a few days to try running my own Facebook ads. I will preface this by saying that I have 8 years of experience successfully running Facebook ads for books, so I wasn’t going into it a novice. But no matter what I tried, even up to using the same ad copy and images they had used, I could not replicate their results, so I handed the reigns back to them and don’t regret it.
Though there were a few hiccups and misunderstandings, I absolutely would work with them again if Backerkit Marketing had not accepted my campaign this time around.
Things I did this time: Used Jellop as my marketing partner.
Things I’m doing differently next time: Using Backerkit as my marketing partner.

What I Did During Launch

Launch time was mainly spent blasting social media, mailing out to my mailing list, and responding to comments on the Kickstarter and Facebook ads. Jellop gave me links to all the Facebook ads they ran so that I could respond to comments. Being on top of customer support is crucial during your launch because responding quickly to all inquiries builds backer trust.
I also went through the list of Facebook groups I’d made during pre-launch and posted to one a day throughout the launch to let them know my Kickstarter had launched.
My one regret is that I didn’t post more Updates. Honestly, I still wasn’t sure how the Update system worked then, and I looked at it as just a way to spam people who had just backed the Kickstarter. I personally HATE being spammed, so I did not post Updates about Stretch Goals reached or anything beyond what I deemed absolutely necessary. I have come to realize that during launch, Updates should be used as a hype tool, so I will be posting more Updates this time around.

After Launch - Manufacturing

When the Kickstarter reached about $100k, I realized I had made several mistakes in my offerings. One was that I offered a set of 4 candles…which I would have to label myself. Another was offering signed paperbacks.
My original plan was to have everything shipped to my house, put the packages all together, then load them up in my car and take them to the post office. This was when I was expecting to make $30k max. Surely, I wouldn’t have more than 50 packages to physically ship myself…… yeahhhh. By the time the Kickstarter was over, I had 1,600+ orders that included physical items beyond just the unsigned books. There was no way I, as one person, could do it all myself.
But before we get into the logistics of warehousing and shipping, let’s get into manufacturing, because this project had a lot of different physical products from a lot of different places. I’m only going to list the items I had issues with.
Art – The main reason I Kickstarted Lewd Dungeon Adventures in the first place was that I could not afford all the art I wanted to go into it. During the Kickstarter, I offered 2 additional bonus campaigns as Stretch Goals. This was 2 extra installments of the game that both needed art. It was not long before I realized that my one artist would not be able to illustrate the entire thing and get it done before the projected deadline. I ended up hiring 8 more artists to work on the project. I hired them from a variety of places, from 99 Designs to DeviantArt, to Fiverr, to artists recommended by author friends, and even artists I’d worked with in the past. Two of them, I am not using again because of lack of communication and turning in art late. One of them submitted plagiarized work that ended up getting caught by a fan after the final product was delivered…which was mortifying and a complete nightmare. But for the most part, my artists delivered their work before the deadline, which helped get the product delivered to customers early.
Dice Tray – The dice tray for my game was manufactured by someone on Etsy. The prototype actually had an error when she sent it to me, but her customer service was so good that I decided to still move forward with using her for the Kickstarter, and I don’t regret it. This angel seriously stored those dice trays for me for about 6 months and still was gracious enough to offer me a discount and free shipping.
Candles – I decided to offer a set of 4 votive candles with the game’s logo on them. These were actually relevant to one of the campaigns in the Kickstarter. I ordered the candles from Michaels and tried a few different companies for the logo stickers. I ended up sticking the logos on the candles by hand…and there were about 1,000 of them to do, which took me two days of labor plus having my mom over to help. I would never do it again and do not recommend it.
Signed Books – I also had about 1,000 books to hand-sign. I will NEVER offer signed books again unless I put a limit on the quantity.

After Launch – Shipping and Warehousing

Once I realized I would have more physical products to ship than I could handle myself, I started looking for shipping solutions. Enter EasyShip.
EasyShip is one of the biggest name shipping companies for Kickstarters. They reached out to me directly, and after doing some research, I accepted a contract with them. I was then assigned my own shipping representative. They hooked me up with the warehouse I would be working with, UFreight, and we started coordinating everything.
I do not know if my shipping representative was new or just…not great at his job, and I’m not going to be a dick and name him outright, but he dropped the ball more times than I find acceptable, which made for a pretty frustrating experience, if I’m being honest.
For instance, when I was uploading order information to their platform, all of my orders errored out due to the form missing a field. His solution was for me to enter the missing information on 1,600+ individual orders manually. And I was like… there’s got to be an easier way than this, talk to your tech department. And there was.
Other not so great experiences included being told that the couriers would just bill my account the difference if the weights of packages weren’t right…and having most of my orders returned because of it, which led to a pretty good chunk of fees from the warehouse from needing to have the orders re-shipped. And not knowing that a certain courier would only accept a minimum amount of packages, which I didn’t meet their requirements, so these packages just sat at the warehouse, and I knew nothing about it until a customer reached out to inquire about where their order was.
Would I use EasyShip again? I’m not going to say no, but I 100% won’t say yes until I’ve explored other options first. I am actually taking a break this next Kickstarter from needing to use a shipping company, but when I do have physical products to ship, I will be using a different company. My experience with EasyShip was just too needlessly frustrating to want to continue a business partnership with them.
UFreight, however, was great to work with. My rep there was always on the ball and kept me informed every step of the way. I would highly recommend them as a warehouse partner.

Other Important Things

If you are going to have add-ons for your Kickstarter, I highly recommend using Backerkit for your backer surveys. Setting it up is a bit of a pain, but it makes it really easy to organize and deliver things to who they need to go to. Plus, they will do a lot of customer support for you, leaving you to focus on other things.
With that said, not everyone will fill out their backer survey. It’s frustrating and even a bit perplexing. I have people that pledged to my highest tier but still haven’t filled out their survey, and I delivered the Kickstarter to everyone else in February. It happens, and you can either make a choice to refund people or just wait until, hopefully, one day, they’ll claim their pledge.
Some backers will also try to update their mailing address after their pledge has shipped. As a creator, know that as soon as a package leaves your residence/warehouse and is with a courier, it is no longer your responsibility to ensure it gets where it’s supposed to go. In most cases, the best thing you can do is either give the backer the courier’s information so that they can try to intercept the package or suggest mail forwarding, if they have just moved. Thankfully, most backers are understanding of all of this.

In Conclusion

I know this was a lot. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments, and I will answer them as best I can.
And for anyone curious about following my next Kickstarter, you can find it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/phoenixgrey/price-of-the-dragon-a-role-playing-game-for-couples Honestly, I’m not really sure how well it will do, but we’re expecting 6-figures.
I hope this helps someone out there that’s trying to get started. Running your first Kickstarter is intimidating and a bit scary, and you probably will make a few mistakes your first time around – Lord knows, I did – but it’s definitely worth it if you’re willing to put the time and effort in.

Hey everyone, here's a few pictures. There's a lot listed below that is not pictured so just let me know what you are interested in and I can provide additional pictures.
Prices do not include shipping unless "shipped" is noted. Shipping is $4 for 1 game (1st Class in a Padded/Bubble Wrapped Envelope). An additional $1 per game (if weight exceeds 12 oz). I only accept PayPal via Friends & Family or Venmo F&F.
Consoles + Accessories
Nintendo 64 Console w/ hookups + OEM Controller - $85 shipped
Nintendo 64 OEM Controller Pak (NUS-004) - $13 shipped
Nintendo 64 Performance Memory Card - $10 shipped
Nintendo DSI (TMNT Decals) w/ Charger - $50 shipped
Sega Master System w/ hookups + controller (small crack/break in console shell) $125 + shipping
Super Nintendo Snes Jr Console (console only; tested) - $90 shipped
N64 Games
Blast Corps - $18
Diddy Kong Racing - $30
Doom 64 - $40
Madden Football 64 - $5
Mario Party - $45
Mario Party 2 - $55
NFL Quarterback Club 2000 - $5
Pilot Wings - $17
Pokemon Snap - $20
NES Games
Adventure of Bayou Billy - $7
Anticipation - $5
Bad Street Brawler - $13
Battle Chess (CIB) - $32
Blades of Steel - $9
Dragon Warrior (CIB) - $70
Dragon Warrior II -$60
Dragon Warrior - III - $120
Dragon Warrior IV - $160
Exodus Ultima - $11
Faxanadu - $12
Fester's Quest - $10
Final Fantasy - $25
Golf - $3
Gotcha - $7
Ghost 'N Goblins - $15
Greg Norman's Golf Power - $14
Gyruss - $9
Hydlide - $9
Iron Sword - $8
Little League Baseball - $12
Magic of Scheherazade (CIB) - $65
Mach Rider - $8
Metal Gear (w/ worn box) - $80
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out - $40
Paperboy - $16
The Punisher - $27
Rad Racer II - $7
Super Glove Ball - $7
Superman - $21
Super Mario Bros. - $15
Super Mario Bros./ Duck Hunt - $7
Super Off-Road - $12
Super Sprint (Tengen) - $7
Super Team Games - $9
Tetris - $12
Tetris 2 -$9
Tiger-Heli - $5
To The Earth - $5
Top Gun - $5
Winter Games by Epyx - $6
Nintendo Gameboy/GBC
Mary Kate & Ashley's New Adventures - $4
Smurf's Nightmare - $10
Super Mario Land (worn label) - $12
Yu- Gi- Oh Dark Duel Stories - $10
Nintendo GBA games (cart only)
007 Everything or Nothing - $7
A Series of Unfortunate Events -$4
Backyard Baseball - $5
Backyard Baseball 2006 - $7
Backyard Baseball 2007 - $7
Backyard Football - $8
Backyard Football 2006 - $4
Backyard Football 2007 - $5
Battleship / Risk / Clue - $6
Bratz - $4
Butt Ugly Martians: BKM Battles - $5
Cars - $5
Cartoon Network Speedway - $6
Catz - $5
Cho Makaimura R Super Ghouls N Ghost ( Japanese Import) - $95 Shipped
Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2 - $4
Dogz - $6
Dora Explorer's Pirate Pig's Treasure - $4
Dragon Ball Z Supersonic Warriors - $20
Earth Worm Jim - $16
ESPN Great Outdoor Games Bass 2002 - $5
Fantastic 4 Flame On - $3
Finding Nemo - $5
Frogger's Journey - $6
Hot Wheels Stunt Track Challenge - $3
Hot Wheels World Race - $5
Incredibles Rise of the Underminer - $6
Jimmy Neutron Attack of the Twonkies - $4
Jimmy Neutron Jet Fusion - $3
Lord of the Rings The Two Towers - $10
Lost Vikings - $25
Lizzie McGuire: On the Go - $3
Madagascar & Shrek 2 - $5
Madagascar Operation Penguin - $6
Madden 2005 - $5
Monster Jam Maximum Destruction - $6
Namco Museum - $6
Oddworld Munch's Oddysee - $12
Pong Asterios Yar's Revenge - $4
Power Rangers Dino Thunder - $8
Quad Desert Furty - $3
Road Rash Jail Break - $10
Shark Tale - $4
Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron - $5
Star Wars Episode II Attack of the Clones - $5
Teen Titans - $12
The Incredibles - $3
Top Gear GT Championship - $10
Yu-Gi-Oh Double Pack 2 - $13
Yu-Gi-Oh Eternal Duelist Soul - $12
Legend of Zelda Classic NES Series - $30
Nintendo 3DS (loose)
Transformers Dark of the Moon Stealth Edition - $7
Nintendo DS Games (cart only unless noted)
Avatar The Last Airbender - $13
Backyard Sports Rookie Rush - $4
Bionicle Matoran Adventures - $6
Club Penguin - $4
Happy Feet - $4
Mario Hoops 3 on 3 - $10
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - $10
Megaman Starforce Dragon - $95 shipped
Metroid Hunters First Hunt - $6
Namco Museum DS - $8
Nintendo Dogs: Chihuahua & Friends - $6
Nintendo Dogs: Dachshund & Friends (CIB) - $10
Nintendo Dogs: Lab & Friends - $6
Ping Pals - $3
Plants vs Zombies - $10
Ratatouille - $5
Ridge Racer DS - $8
Shrek Superslam - $5
MySims - $5
MySims Kingdom - $5
Spectrobes - $5
Spiderman 3 - $8
Star Wars II The Original Trilogy (LEGO) - $6
Super Money Ball Touch & Roll - $6
Zelda Spirit Tracks (missing manual; inserts/case included) - $65 shipped
Nintendo Gamecube Games (CIB unless noted)
ATV Quad Power Racing 2 (missing manual) - $9
Cars - $8
ESPN Winter Sports 2002 - $6
Madden 2003 - $5
Madden 2005 - $6
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 - $8
Spongebob Squarepants: Lights Camera Pants - $16
WWE Day of Reckoning 2 (missing manual) - $25
WWE WrestleMania X8 (missing manual) - $12
Nintendo Wii Games (all have cases)
All-Star Cheer Squad - $5
Cabelas Big Game Hunter 2010 (CIB) - $8
Call of Duty Black Ops (CIB) - $9
Carnival Games (CIB) - $6
Chuck E Cheese Party Games (Missing Manual) - $10
Country Dance (CIB) - $8
Deal or No Deal (CIB) - $5
Guitar Hero III Legends of Rock (CIB) - $19
Hannah Montana Spotlight World Tour (Sealed) - $8
Major League Baseball 2K12 (CIB) - $10
Thrillville Off The Rails (CIB) - $5
Wii Music - $6
Wii Sports (Disc & Manual) - $20
Wii Sports Resort (CIB) - $30
Playstation PS1 Games (CIB unless noted)
007 Tomorrow Never Dies - $7
A Bug's Life (GH) - $7
Action Bass - $6
Ball Breakers (sealed) - $10
Bass Championship - $7
Battle Arena Toshinden (GH) - $14
Bushido Blade - $36
Crash Bandicoot Warped (GH) - $13
Fighting Force - $20
Gran Turismo 2 (GH) - $12
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone - $13
IHRA Drag Racing - $5
Inspector Gadget: Gadget's Crazy Maze - $8
MediEvil (missing manual) - $35
Missile Command - $6
Monster's Inc (GH) - $9
Nascar Heat (CIB) - $7
NBA Live 2000 - $8
NBA Shootout 98 - $9
NFL Blitz 2000 - $15
NHL 98 - $8
NHL Faceoff 97 (GH) - $5
Parasite Eve - $75
Parasite Eve (missing demo disk) - $60
Parasite Eve II - $110
PlayStation Underground Jampack Fall 2001 - $9
Q* Bert - $10
Resident Evil Director's Cut (GH) - $30
Rugrats Search for Reptar (GH) - $17
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie - $12
Soul Blade - $23
Star wars Dark Forces (unoriginal jewel case) - $13
Syphon Filter 2 (GH) - $10
Tecmo Super Bowl - $20
Tiger Woods 99 - $8
Tony Hawk Pro Skater (GH) - $10
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 (GH) - $12
Triply Play 99 - $8
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire 2nd Edition - $8
World Cup 98 - $12
Playstation 2 PS2 Games (CIB unless noted)
007 Everything or Nothing - $7
007 Nightfire - $9
Ace Combat 4 Shattered Skies (GH) - $8
All-Star Baseball 2005 - $5
Ben 10 Protector of Earth - $9
Bully - $22
Clock Tower 3 - $70
Crash Bandicoot The Wrath of the Cortex (GH version) - $10
Crash Bandicoot The Wrath of the Cortex - $12
Devil May Cry (GH) - $7
Enter the Matrix - $10
Eragon - $6
Family Feud - $5
Final Fantasy X (GH) -$9
Frogger the Great Quest - $7
Godfather the Game - $14
God of War (2 Disc Set) - $12
Guitar Hero II - $7
Guitar Hero III Legends of Rock - $9
High Heat Major League Baseball 2004 - $5
Hobbit - $10
Karaoke Revolution Party - $8
Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol - $5
Madden 2003 - $5
Madden 2007 - $5
Madden 2008 - $5
Midway Arcade Treasures - $11
MLB 07 the Show - $5
MLB Slugfest 2004 - $11
Nascar 2001 - $5
Nascar Thunder 2003 - $7
NFL Blitz Pro - $10
Onimusha 3 Demon Siege - $21
Pinball Hall of Fame - $5
Pirates - The Legend of Black Kat - $12
Red Dead Revolver - $17
Rise of Kasai - $8
Silent Hill 4 The Room (Factory Sealed) - $325 shipped
Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith - $9
SSX Tricky (missing manual) - $19
Summoner - $10
Teen Titans - $22
Theme Park Roller Coaster - $8
Time Crisis 3 - $23
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell - $6
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger - $11
Warriors of Might & Magic - $10
Wheel of Fortune - $7
Yu-Gi-Oh Duelists of the Roses - $22
PS3
Band Hero - $6
Call of Duty Black Ops - $10
Call of Duty World at War -$11
Crysis 2 - $7
Fifa Soccer 11 - $5
Guitar Hero 5 - $11
MLB the Show 10 - $4
MLB the Show 11 - $4
NCAA Football 11 - $9
Sports Champions - $5
Sega 32X (all cart only)
Primal Rage - $50
Virtua Fighter - $24
Virtua Racing - $20
Sega Dreamcast Games (disc & manual only***; do not have original cases unless noted CIB)
Centipede - $7
Plasma Sword Night of Bilstein - $50
Psychic Force 2012 - $25
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing - $12
Rippin Riders - $5
Sega Bass Fishing - $8
Sega Rally 2 Championship - $12
Speed Devils - $15
Sword of Berserk: Gut's Rage (game only) - $65
Trick Style - $7
Zombie Revenge - $30
Sega Genesis
Shining Force (Case & Cart) - $75
Shining Force 2 (Cart Only) - $55
Sega Master System (Mostly CIB; ask me to check manual)
Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars - $28
California Games (missing manual) - $20
Choplifter - $18
Ghostbusters - $25
Great Baseball - $10
Monopoly - $10
Parlour Games - $10
Pro Wrestling - $14
Rocky - $17
Space Harrier (missing manual) - $18
Shinobi (includes map; missing manual) - $30
Super Nintendo (SNES) Games (cart only)
Aeroacrobat - $9
Brandish - $85
Brett Hull Hockey - $7
Bulls vs Blazers - $4
Capcom MVP Football - $7
Captain Commando - $175
Cliffhanger - $9
College Slam - $7
Donkey Kong Country - $20
ESPN Baseball Tonight - $4
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest - $17
Football Fury - $20
Harley's Humongous Adventure - $15
Magic Johnson's Super Slam Dunk - $6
Mickey's Ultimate Challenge - $12
MechWarrior 3050 - $17
Monopoly - $5
Ms. Pacman - $12
NCAA Basketball - $5
Nickelodeon GUTS - $16
Ninja Warrior - $130
NFL Football - $5
Pit Fighter - $8
Romance of the Three Kingdoms II - $20
Soldier's of Fortune (rental sticker on label) - $25
Stanley Cup Championship -$6
Street Fighter II - $15
Super Caesar's Palace - $4
Super High Impact - $5
Super Star Wars Return of the Jedi - $16
Top Gear - $15
Xbox 360 (CIB)
Assassin's Creed - $6
Battlefield Hardline Deluxe Edition - $10
Battlefield 3 Limited Edition - $6
Fifa Soccer 10 - $5
Fifa Work Cup South Africa 2010 - $5
Grand Theft Auto V - $10
Injustice Gods Among Us - $5
L.A. Noire - $7
Left 4 Dead 2 - $11
Mafia II - $10
N3 Ninety-Nine Nights - $20
Nascar The Game 2011 - $9
NBA 2K12 - $5
NHL 10 - $3
NHL 14 - $6
Pocket Bike Racer - $5
Red Dead Redemption - $9
Saints Row - $10
Saints Row The Third - $5
Skate 3 - $6
Virtua Tennis 4 - $9

Photos upon request
 

amiibo	Condition
Zelda Loftwing	New In Box
Sanrio amiibo cards	Sealed Pack
Inkling Boy - Neon Green	Loose/Mint
Mario Cereal Box	Cereal Removed/Flattened
Isabelle Summer Outfit	Open Box
Cyrus/K.K./Reese	New In Box/Damaged box
Tom Nook	New In Box
Mabel	New In Box

 

Switch	Condition
Azure Striker Gunvolt Striker Pack	Sealed
Aggelos	Complete in Box
Bendy and the Ink Machine	Complete in Box
Cruel King and the Great Hero Storybook Edition	Complete in Box
Disgaea 1 Rosen Edition	Complete in Box
Ghostbusters The Video Game Remastered	Sealed
Metroid Dread Collector's Edition	Sealed, a few dings associated with shipping
Monster Hunter Stories 2 Collector's Edition	Sealed
River City Girls	Sealed, Best Buy Variant
Shantae Collector's Edition	Sealed
Shantae Risky's Revenge Collector's Edition	Sealed
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection	Sealed
Unravel 2	Sealed
Yu-Gi-Oh Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution	Loose
Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap	Complete in Box, Includes keychain and OST

 

Wii	Condition
Batallion Wars 2	Game and Case
Castle of Shikigami III	Complete in Box
Okami	Game and Case

 

WiiU Games	Condition
Batman Arkham City Armored Edition	Sealed
Disney Infinity 2.0	Sealed
Mario Kart 8	Complete in Box
Nintendoland	Complete in Box
Star Fox Guard	Complete in Box

 

DS	Condition
Super Scribblenauts	Loose
Witch's Wish	Loose

 

3DS	Condition
Kid Icarus Uprising (Japanese)	Game, Manual, and Case (No Big Box)

 

GBA	Condition
Boktai 2	Loose
Game & Watch Gallery 4	Loose, Torn Label
Lady Sia	Loose, EU import
Lady Sia	Loose. Label imperfections
Super Puzzle Fighter 2	Complete in Box
Super Mario Advance	No label

 

GB	Condition
Alleyway	Loose
Kid Dracula	Loose
Pocket Monsters Red (Import)	Loose, still saves

 

NES	Condition
Kid Icarus	Game, Box, and Manual; Box shows wear; Protective case for box and manual included

 

SNES	Condition
Mortal Kombat II	Loose
Super Mario World	Loose
Super Scope 6	Loose
Wild Guns	Loose, Bad Label Damage

 

N64	Condition
Bomber Man 64 The Second Attack!	Loose
Pokemon Snap	Loose

 

Gamecube	Condition
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles	Disc and case. Artwork is a little dinged up. No Manual
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets	Complete in Box, blockbuster stickers on case.
Super Mario Sunshine	Game and Manual. Case included, but the artwork may be a reprint.

 

Sega Genesis	Condition
Jurrassic Park	Loose cartridge, Sharpie on Label
Spider-Man	Loose cartridge, Label Damage
Genesis 6-Pak	Loose cartridge

 

Sega Saturn	Condition
Vampire Savior (Import, Dark Stalkers 2)	Game and artwork, no spine slip. Some creases in the artwork.

 

Sega Dreamcast	Condition
Power Stone	CIB
Power Stone 2	CIB

 

PSP	Condition
Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories	Game and Case, Greatest Hits
Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories	Loose, Greatest Hits, Cracked Casing
Little Big Planet	Loose
Loco Roco	Complete in Box
Patapon	Loose
Silent Hill Origins	Complete In Box
Star Wars Battlefront Renegade Squadron	Complete in Box

 

PS1	Condition
Castlevania Chronicles	Loose
Chocobo's Dungeon 2	Complete in Box
Crash Bash	Complete in Box
Dark Stalkers	Loose
Dark Stalkers 3	Loose
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver	Loose
Silent Hill	Loose disc
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo	Complete in Box
Valkyrie Profile	Discs and Case, no manual
World of Dragon Warrior Torneko The Last Hope	Loose disc

 

PS2	Condition
Burnout	Loose Disc
Burnout 2	Loose Disc
Burnout 3 Takedown	Complete, Water Damage on back cover art
Burnout Dominator	Case and Disc, Disc has superficial scratches but still boots
Burnout Revenge	Complete, Greatest Hits
Castlevania Curse of Darkness	Loose, Disc has light scratching
Crash Bandicoot The Wrath of Cortex	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Dragon Ball Z Budokai	Complete in Box
Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi	Complete in Box; Greatest Hits
Final Fantasy X	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Final Fantasy X-2	Complete; Greatest Hits
God of War II	Complete; Greatest Hits
Grand Theft Auto Vice City	Disc, Case, Poster, No Manual
.Hack Quaratine	Game, Anime Disc, and Case. Missing Manual
Jak and Daxter	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Marvel vs Capcom 2	Cracked Disc, won't boot for me. Comes with case, no manual
Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Naruto Ultimate Ninja 2	Disc and Case
Need for Speed Underground	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Need for Speed Underground 2	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Resident Evil Dead Aim	Game and Case, No manual
Scarface	Complete; Greatest Hits
Star Wars Battlefront II	Disc and Case
Tekken Tag Tournament	Disc and Case; Greatest Hits

 

PS3	Condition
Castlevania Lord of Shadow Collection	Loose

 

PS4	Condition
APEX Construct	Sealed

 

PS5	Condition
Battlefield 2042	Complete in Box

 

XBOX One	Condition
Watchdogs	Sealed

 

Consoles	Condition
Monster Hunter Rise Edition Switch	New in Box (No game code)
White OLED Nintendo Switch	New in Box
OLED Switch Tablet	New/Unused Tablet Only
Legend of Zelda Game & Watch (35th Anniversary)	New in Box

 

Controllers	Condition
Fortnite Joy-Con Set	Comes from the Fortnite Edition Console, never used
Joy-Con Grip	Bagged/Unused - Came with console
Oculus Quest 1/Rift S Left Controller	Used but very good condition. Comes with silicon case
Oculus Quest 1/Rift S Right Controller	Used but very good condition. Comes with silicon case
Platinum Gamecube Controller	Third Party, no nintendo logo, wired, good condition
Joy-Con (Left/Neon Blue)	Good, no drift
Joy-Con (Left/Gray)	Good, no drift
Joy-Con (Right/Neon Blue)	Good, no drift
Joy-Con (Right/Neon Red)	Good, no drift, Factory refurbished
SNES Controller	Third Party, no nintendo logo
SPIN Z WiiU Pro Controller	Black, Near Mint
SPIN Z WiiU Pro Controller	Black, Near Mint
Gray Wavebird w/Receiver	All OEM, the receiver and controller have a discremepncy on channels, but everything works as intended.
WiiU Pro Controller	Black, OEM, Good condition

 

Misc.	Condition
Switch Dock (Black)	Good
Black MagicGate 8MB PS2 Memory Card	Has Free McBoot loaded onto the card
Blue MagicGate 8MB PS2 Memory Card	Has Free McBoot loaded onto the card
Yellow Nyko MagicGate 8MB PS2 Memory Card	Has Free McBoot loaded onto the card
Super Smash Bros Ultimate Nintendo Switch ConsoleBox Only	Empty Box, good condition
Animal Crossing Nintendo Switch Console Box Only	Empty Box, good condition
Pokemon Dialga & Palkia Switch Lite Box Only	Empty Box, good condition
Fortnite Nintendo Switch Console Box Only	Empty Box, good condition
The Art of Splatoon 2	Sealed, Heavy book with media mail options
Kid Icarus Uprising Players Guide (Imported, no AR cards)	Shows a little wear
Nintendo Switch AC Adapter	Unused in original bag, Authentic Nintendo Adapter
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Pre-Order Coin	Sealed
Breath of the Wild Sheikah Coin	From BotW Special Edition, Good condition
Pokken Art Cel Pre-Order Bonus	Sealed
Blastoise New 3DS Plates	Plates are mint and unused
Nintendo 3DS Stand	OEM, Came with Kid Icarus Uprising
Kid Icarus AR Card Set (205/404)	Contains 205 different US cards, no duplicates. This is roughly half the entire set. An itemized list can be provided upon request.
Shantae Risky's Revenge 2 LP Soundtrack Vinyl	Sealed

 

Cases	Condition
Dot Hack (.HACK) Infection	Case & Manual
Dot Hack (.HACK) Mutation	Case only
Dot Hack (.HACK) Outbreak	Case & Manual
God of War Chains of Olympus	Case and Manual Only

 

Freebies	Condition
Gold Game & Watch Stand	Gold Game & Watch stand meant for the 35th Anniversary Edition Zelda G&W, but likely works with others.
Playstation 2 IDE Connector	Upgraded my HD Adapter to SATA, these are the old/leftover connectors.
Leapster Games

 

Wants	Console
Kid Icarus Uprising AR Cards: AKDE-025 AKDE-039 (Will consider others)	None
Asheron's Call Memorabilia	PC
Game & Watch Devices (Excluding 35th Mario & Zelda editions)	None
Sola to robo	DS
Izuna Legend of the Unemployed Ninja (Case Only)	DS
Little Red Ridinghood Zombie BBQ	DS
Metal Gear Acid	PSP
Classic NES Series: Ice Climbers	GBA
Classic NES Series: Excitebike	GBA
Classic NES Series: Dr. Mario	GBA
Classic NES Series: Donkey Kong	GBA
Classic NES Series: Pac-Man	GBA
Classic NES Series: The Legend of Zelda	GBA
Classic NES Series: Xevious	GBA
Castlevania Legends	GBC
Night Warriors Darkstalkers Revenge (Case & Manual Only)	Saturn
N64 Expansion Pack	N64
R.O.B. Accessories	NES
Wii Sports Club	Wii U
Turbo	Wii U
Blaster Master 2	Genesis

Prices are subjective, negotiable, and do not include shipping.   Photos upon request
 

amiibo	Price	Condition
Zelda Loftwing	30	New In Box
Sanrio amiibo cards	12	Sealed Pack
Inkling Boy - Neon Green	39	Loose/Mint
Mario Cereal Box	15	Cereal Removed/Flattened
Isabelle Summer Outfit	40	Open Box
Cyrus/K.K./Reese	18	New In Box/Damaged box
Tom Nook	12	New In Box
Mabel	9	New In Box

 

Switch	Price	Condition
Azure Striker Gunvolt Striker Pack	40	Sealed
Aggelos	40	Complete in Box
Bendy and the Ink Machine	30	Complete in Box
Cruel King and the Great Hero Storybook Edition	60	Complete in Box
Disgaea 1 Rosen Edition	100	Complete in Box
Ghostbusters The Video Game Remastered	30	Sealed
Metroid Dread Collector's Edition	110	Sealed, a few dings associated with shipping
Monster Hunter Stories 2 Collector's Edition	160	Sealed
River City Girls	200	Sealed, Best Buy Variant
Shantae Collector's Edition	150	Sealed
Shantae Risky's Revenge Collector's Edition	150	Sealed
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection	30	Sealed
Unravel 2	30	Sealed
Yu-Gi-Oh Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution	18	Loose
Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap	40	Complete in Box

 

Wii	Price	Condition
Batallion Wars 2	11	Game and Case
Castle of Shikigami III	75	Complete in Box
Okami	10	Game and Case

 

WiiU Games	Price	Condition
Batman Arkham City Armored Edition	40	Sealed
Disney Infinity 2.0	15	Sealed
Mario Kart 8	15	Complete in Box
Nintendoland	10	Complete in Box
Star Fox Guard	10	Complete in Box

 

DS	Price	Condition
Super Scribblenauts	5	Loose
Witch's Wish	60	Loose

 

3DS	Price	Condition
Kid Icarus Uprising (Japanese)	40	Game, Manual, and Case (No Big Box)

 

GBA	Price	Condition
Boktai 2	200	Loose
Game & Watch Gallery 4	16	Loose, Torn Label
Lady Sia	30	Loose, EU import
Lady Sia	50	Loose. Label imperfections
Super Puzzle Fighter 2	60	Complete in Box
Super Mario Advance	13	No label

 

GB	Price	Condition
Alleyway	5	Loose
Kid Dracula	240	Loose
Pocket Monsters Red (Import)	10	Loose, still saves

 

NES	Price	Condition
Kid Icarus	180	Game, Box, and Manual; Box shows wear; Protective case for box and manual included

 

SNES	Price	Condition
Mortal Kombat II	15	Loose
Super Mario World	16	Loose
Super Scope 6	10	Loose
Wild Guns	270	Loose, Bad Label Damage

 

N64	Price	Condition
Bomber Man 64 The Second Attack!	250	Loose
Pokemon Snap	15	Loose

 

Gamecube	Price	Condition
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles	14	Disc and case. Artwork is a little dinged up. No Manual
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets	16	Complete in Box, blockbuster stickers on case.
Super Mario Sunshine	40	Game and Manual. Case included, but the artwork may be a reprint.

 

Sega Genesis	Price	Condition
Jurrassic Park	10	Loose cartridge, Sharpie on Label
Spider-Man	12	Loose cartridge, Label Damage
Genesis 6-Pak	18	Loose cartridge

 

Sega Saturn	Price	Condition
Vampire Savior (Import, Dark Stalkers 2)	40	Game and artwork, no spine slip. Some creases in the artwork.

 

Sega Dreamcast	Price	Condition
Power Stone	120	CIB
Power Stone 2	160	CIB

 

PSP	Price	Condition
Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories	19	Game and Case, Greatest Hits
Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories	14	Loose, Greatest Hits, Cracked Casing
Little Big Planet	9	Loose
Loco Roco	7	Complete in Box
Patapon	7	Loose
Silent Hill Origins	50	Complete In Box
Star Wars Battlefront Renegade Squadron	13	Complete in Box

 

PS1	Price	Condition
Castlevania Chronicles	120	Loose
Chocobo's Dungeon 2	100	Complete in Box
Crash Bash	15	Complete in Box
Dark Stalkers	47	Loose
Dark Stalkers 3	47	Loose
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver	18	Loose
Silent Hill	105	Loose disc
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo	40	Complete in Box
Valkyrie Profile	325	Discs and Case, no manual
World of Dragon Warrior Torneko The Last Hope	80	Loose disc

 

PS2	Price	Condition
Burnout	8	Loose Disc
Burnout 2	8	Loose Disc
Burnout 3 Takedown	11	Complete, Water Damage on back cover art
Burnout Dominator	9	Case and Disc, Disc has superficial scratches but still boots
Burnout Revenge	10	Complete, Greatest Hits
Castlevania Curse of Darkness	60	Loose, Disc has light scratching
Crash Bandicoot The Wrath of Cortex	10	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Dragon Ball Z Budokai	11	Complete in Box
Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi	15	Complete in Box; Greatest Hits
Final Fantasy X	6	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Final Fantasy X-2	6	Complete; Greatest Hits
God of War II	13	Complete; Greatest Hits
Grand Theft Auto Vice City	10	Disc, Case, Poster, No Manual
.Hack Quaratine	300	Game, Anime Disc, and Case. Missing Manual
Jak and Daxter	10	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Marvel vs Capcom 2	60	Cracked Disc, won't boot for me. Comes with case, no manual
Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty	10	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Naruto Ultimate Ninja 2	10	Disc and Case
Need for Speed Underground	10	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Need for Speed Underground 2	17	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2	10	Greatest Hits, Used, Disc and Case
Resident Evil Dead Aim	50	Game and Case, No manual
Scarface	40	Complete; Greatest Hits
Star Wars Battlefront II	10	Disc and Case
Tekken Tag Tournament	10	Disc and Case; Greatest Hits

 

PS3	Price	Condition
Castlevania Lord of Shadow Collection	30	Loose

 

PS4	Price	Condition
APEX Construct	15	Sealed

 

PS5	Price	Condition
Battlefield 2042	20	Complete in Box

 

XBOX One	Price	Condition
Watchdogs	15	Sealed

 

Consoles	Price	Condition
Monster Hunter Rise Edition Switch	420	New in Box (No game code)
White OLED Nintendo Switch	400	New in Box
OLED Switch Tablet	250	New/Unused Tablet Only
Legend of Zelda Game & Watch (35th Anniversary)	50	New in Box

 

Controllers	Price	Condition
Fortnite Joy-Con Set	120	Comes from the Fortnite Edition Console, never used
Joy-Con Grip	8	Bagged/Unused - Came with console
Oculus Quest 1/Rift S Left Controller	115	Used but very good condition. Comes with silicon case
Oculus Quest 1/Rift S Right Controller	115	Used but very good condition. Comes with silicon case
Platinum Gamecube Controller	20	Third Party, no nintendo logo, wired, good condition
Joy-Con (Left/Neon Blue)	35	Good, no drift
Joy-Con (Left/Gray)	35	Good, no drift
Joy-Con (Right/Neon Blue)	35	Good, no drift
Joy-Con (Right/Neon Red)	35	Good, no drift, Factory refurbished
SNES Controller	10	Third Party, no nintendo logo
SPIN Z WiiU Pro Controller	25	Black, Near Mint
SPIN Z WiiU Pro Controller	25	Black, Near Mint
Gray Wavebird w/Receiver	90	All OEM, the receiver and controller have a discremepncy on channels, but everything works as intended.
WiiU Pro Controller	35	Black, OEM, Good condition

 

Misc.	Price	Condition
Switch Dock (Black)	40	Good
Black MagicGate 8MB PS2 Memory Card	20	Has Free McBoot loaded onto the card
Blue MagicGate 8MB PS2 Memory Card	20	Has Free McBoot loaded onto the card
Yellow Nyko MagicGate 8MB PS2 Memory Card	20	Has Free McBoot loaded onto the card
Super Smash Bros Ultimate Nintendo Switch ConsoleBox Only	90	Empty Box, good condition
Animal Crossing Nintendo Switch Console Box Only	20	Empty Box, good condition
Pokemon Dialga & Palkia Switch Lite Box Only	30	Empty Box, good condition
Fortnite Nintendo Switch Console Box Only	20	Empty Box, good condition
The Art of Splatoon 2	80	Sealed, Heavy book with media mail options
Kid Icarus Uprising Players Guide (Imported, no AR cards)	30	Shows a little wear
Nintendo Switch AC Adapter	20	Unused in original bag, Authentic Nintendo Adapter
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Pre-Order Coin	15	Sealed
Breath of the Wild Sheikah Coin	25	From BotW Special Edition, Good condition
Pokken Art Cel Pre-Order Bonus	7	Sealed
Blastoise New 3DS Plates	150	Plates are mint and unused
Nintendo 3DS Stand	30	OEM, Came with Kid Icarus Uprising
Kid Icarus AR Card Set (205/404)	600	Contains 205 different US cards, no duplicates. This is roughly half the entire set. An itemized list can be provided upon request.
Shantae Risky's Revenge 2 LP Soundtrack Vinyl	55	Sealed

 

Cases	Price	Condition
Dot Hack (.HACK) Infection	20	Case & Manual
Dot Hack (.HACK) Mutation	20	Case only
Dot Hack (.HACK) Outbreak	30	Case & Manual
God of War Chains of Olympus	15	Case and Manual Only

 

Freebies	Price	Condition
Gold Game & Watch Stand	Free with purchase	Gold Game & Watch stand meant for the 35th Anniversary Edition Zelda G&W, but likely works with others.
Playstation 2 IDE Connector	Free with purchase	Upgraded my HD Adapter to SATA, these are the old/leftover connectors.
Leapster Games	Free with purchase

 

I am only accepting PayPal F&F.
Shipping is not included. Open to bundle offers.
If you have a panic playdate for trade, hit me up on gameswap.
-------
Some 3ds consoles from my collection. Check the pictures of what's included and tried my best to capture any cosmetic damage. Price is firm for single purchase, + $10 for shipping. Bundle discount is available if you purchase a console + some games from my list below.
Nintendo 3DS XL Pokemon X Y Red Limited Edition ($220) - https://imgur.com/a/S4ixIth
New Nintendo 3DS XL Monster Hunter 4 Edition ($240) - https://imgur.com/a/ciGBtd9 The volume button is stuck, may need to clear the button to make it work, otherwise there's no other issues except cosmetic wear.
Nintendo 3DS XL Retro NES Edition ($240) - https://imgur.com/a/jxpaHl7
New Nintendo 3DS XL Galaxy ($300) - https://imgur.com/a/uWWHhmg
Nintendo 3ds Xl Pokemon X Y Blue Limited Edition ($440) - https://imgur.com/a/3JY7Yh4
-------
​

$175	Shantae: half genie hero, pirate curse, risky revenge director's cut, slipcover	Selling as a bundle, all sealed	PS5
$40	Cthulhu Save Christmas	Sealed	PS5
$55	River city girls	Sealed	PS5
$75	Uncharted golden abyss	Sealed, small tear at the back	PS Vita
$60	Mvp baseball 2005	Sealed	Gamecube
$15	Dragon Ball Z Budokai player choice	Game, case, manual	Gamecube
$225	Pikmin	Sealed	Gamecube
$25	4 gameboy coloadvance lot (all loose) include pac-man collection GBA, spongebob square pants, lizzie mcguire 3 gba, tetris	All loose, selling as a bundle only	Gameboy Advance
$950	Mario and luigi superstar saga (sealed)	Sealed	Gameboy advance
$1200	Sealed gameboy color teal	Sealed, great condition	Gameboy Color
$30	Nano Assault	Loose	3ds
$80	Kid icarus uprising	CIB, not big box, cover art has some minor damage	3ds
$8	Yokai watch	Loose	3ds
$5	Mario Vs donkey kong mini land	Manual only	DS
$5	ATV Quad Frenzy	Loose	DS
$25	Dig Dug Digging Strike	CIB, sticker residue on the front	DS
$10	Super monkey ball touch & roll	Game, case, manual	DS
$30	3 wii games bundle include Truck racer, Miniclip Sushi Go-Round, Brave A Warrior's Tale	All games are sealed. Sealed game top right seal is broken. Selling as a bundle	Wii
$420 + shipping	Nintendo switch OLED scarlet and violet	Brand new, box has minor shipping damage	Switch console

​
​

$50	2064: Read Only Memories	Sealed	Switch
$50	Arc Of Alchemist	Sealed	Switch
$30	Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe	CIB, LRG variant	Switch
$30	Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe	CIB, Bestbuy variant	Switch
$45	Black Bird	Sealed	Switch
$50	BloodRayne Betrayal: Fresh Bites	Sealed	Switch
$105	Bloodrayne 1 & 2: Revamped [Dual Pack]	Sealed	Switch
$100	Bloodstained curse of the moon	CIB, best buy variant	Switch
$60	Bloodstained curse of the moon 2	PAX west variant, sealed, small cut on the plastic cover	Switch
$40	DARQ complete edition	Sealed	Switch
$95	Deponia Collection	Sealed	Switch
$45	Doom	CIB	Switch
$60	Doom the classic collection	Sealed	Switch
$45	Double Dragon Neon	Sealed, LRG variant	Switch
$60	Dusk	Sealed	Switch
$55	Fairy Tail	Game, case, insert	Switch
$48	Fire emblem engage	Standard edition, sealed, ESRB UAE version	Switch
$120 shipped	Fire emblem engage divine edition	Top seal broken, box is in decent condition	Switch
$33	Giga Wrecker ALT	Sealed, LRG variant	Switch
$35	Grand mountain adventure	Sealed	Switch
$35	Gris	LRG variant, sealed	Switch
$35	Hyper Parasite	Sealed	Switch
$30	Ion Fury	CIB	Switch
$85	Jay And Silent Bob: Mall Brawl	Sealed	Switch
$65	Langrisser I & II	Game, case, insert	Switch
$45	Last day of June	Sealed	Switch
$46	Mercenary Kings	CIB	Switch
$75	Metal Unit super rare games	Sealed	Switch
$60	Monster Sanctuary	Sealed	Switch
$100	Minecraft: Story Mode Season Two	CIB	Switch
$50	Murder By Numbers Playasia edition	Sealed	Switch
$45	Night Trap	CIB	Switch
$35	Omori	Sealed	Switch
$60	Oninaki	Sealed, JPN version	Switch
$50	Quake	Sealed	Switch
$60	Rogue Heroes Ruins Of Tasos	Sealed	Switch
$80	Super mario party joycon bundle box only	BOX ONLY, no game or joycons, mint condition	Switch
$50	Shantae LRG variant	Sealed	Switch
$43	Shantae risky revenge director's cut	Sealed	Switch
$56	Shantae and the seven sirens	Bestbuy variant	Switch
$65	Shantae and the seven sirens	LRG variant	Switch
$50	Slime-San Superslime Edition	CIB	Switch
$35	Ms. Splosion Man	CIB	Switch
$160	Stranger Things 3: The Game standard edition	Sealed	Switch
$50	The missing	Sealed	Switch
$20	Valkyria Chronicles 4	Case and joycon skin only no game	Switch
$45	World's End Club Deluxe Edition	Sealed	Switch
$15	Witcher 3 wild hunt complete edition	No game, PEGI, box and insert and case	Switch

​
Adam's venture origins - $30
Creature in the well (sealed) - $50
Captain Tsubasa Rise of the new champions - $20
Deemo - $50
Disgaea 5 Japanese version with English - $45
Doom 64 - $40
HOA (pax west exclusive variant with sunflower seeds, sealed) - $100
HOA (sticker residue from gamestop) - $30
Knights And Bikes limited run (sealed) - $45
Oxenfree (no game, just case and manual) - $35
Pokemon Lets Go Pikachu (loose) - $35
River city girls (Asia version with English support) - $60
Salt and sanctuary (sealed, drowned tome edition) - $140
Sniper elite 4 (sealed) - $35
Super bomber man R (PAL) - $15
Towerfall bestbuy edition (sealed) - $40
Tiny Barbarian launch edition CIB - $20
World end's club deluxe edition bestbuy cover (sealed) - $40
​
No case:
Bubble Bobble 4 Friends (minor damage on the cartridge covert art) - $30
Lego Marvel Super Heroes - $25
Star Wars: Jedi Knights II: Jedi Outcast - $30
​
​

Trading cards

Super rare games
- The lions song sealed pack $10
- Mundaun sealed pack $10
- Last day of June sealed pack $10
​

Gamecube manual only

Warioware $30
Mario Party 5 - $25
F zero gx - $25